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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John B" data-source="post: 13908" data-attributes="member: 207">These hornets are currently one of the biggest worries in Europe and while big efforts have been made to stop their spread none have been particularly successful. It should have been very obvious to New Zealand biosecurity when two males were found last year that an est nest was somewhere in the area. There are now probably 20 to 30 queens in the area and if these are not found before the next lot of queens emerge then the fight will be over before it started. When you are looking for these things they are not the huge Japanese hornets that we have all seen attacking beehives on YouTube. The workers are a bit bigger than a queen wasp but not that much bigger, they can vary a bit but what you are looking for is some orange on the face and an orange stripe near the back of the abdomen, the rest of the hornets is fairly dark. You will most likely see them later in the season hawking bees near the entrance of hives. They have a primary nest which they may expand or they may move to a secondary nest which is likely to be high up a tree and very hard to get at .It's not official policy but my advice to anyone in the outbreak area would be to put out poison baits over the whole summer.</blockquote>

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