Hornets in England - PEST UK

Providing pest control services in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, London, Middlesex, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey, West Midlands, West Sussex, Wiltshire. Est. 1985.

Hornets in England

In Pests

Hornets in England:
Hornets have definitely been on the increase judging by the call outs we get for them at PEST UK. I have found them much less aggressive than wasps or honey bees, even when their nest is being destroyed or removed. I have noticed that in some cases the nests can be very low in numbers. This would indicate that hornet nests may be quite common but if the numbers are low then discovery of the location of the nest will be extremely difficult. The advantage of this will be that the nest survives and produces fertile Queens for the following year. Hornet nest numbers are much smaller than wasp nest numbers. A wasp nest may have a population at it’s peak of several thousand, depending on the conditions throughout the year while a hornets nest is usually only a tenth of this number. Hornets prefer a warmer climate than the UK and PEST UK’s coverage area of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire and Surrey are on the edge of their range. There numbers increase the further south you go in Europe. At the same time Common and German wasps can be found in Southern Europe but in less numbers, their places being taken by solitary wasps, hornets and social wasps (have Queens and sterile females for workers) but these social wasps have much smaller nests, similar in number to the hornets. They compete with the same food sources as wasps but obviously they are much bigger and will quite readily kill and eat wasps. At PEST UK we have found that a year when there are a great number of wasp nests leads to the following year having a low number of hornets nests whatever the weather. I have been contacted in the past by some one whose hobby was filming hornets and he offered to pay PEST UK for the privilege of removing any hornets nests reported to PEST UK rather than us destroying them.
Wasp Control from PestUK
bpca

To book a pest control treatment or free advice then please call us at PEST UK: 0330 100 2811 (local rate) or 0800 026 0308 (free from land lines & some mobiles).

Hornets BPCA

NEXT/PREVIOUS:

Treating Wasps without Insecticides »
Wasp Trap Trial «