{"id":518639,"date":"2026-04-08T01:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T01:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/518639\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T01:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T01:14:11","slug":"asian-hornet-sightings-on-sark-earlier-than-ever-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/518639\/","title":{"rendered":"Asian hornet sightings on Sark ‘earlier than ever before’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The project aims to intercept queen Asian hornets as they “emerge in the spring from hibernation and forage for nectar”.<\/p>\n

It is thought queens do not hibernate over the winter on Sark because nests are destroyed, he said.<\/p>\n

Cunneen said the hornets were thought to be flying the 12 miles from Jersey and 20 miles from France, with nests mostly spotted near the coastlines.<\/p>\n

The traps handed out to volunteers are designed to attract and capture the queens.<\/p>\n

Cunneen said they used to catch 10 to 12 queens in the spring, before encountering six to eight nests during the course of the season, since the first nest was spotted in 2019.<\/p>\n

Sark now has its own destruction kit, meaning it will rely less on resources from Guernsey, while it has also taken delivery of a new tracker <\/a>to be used for the first time in the summer.<\/p>\n

It comes with a “handgun” which helps users locate the sites. <\/p>\n

Cunneen said jurisdictions in the Channel Islands saw combatting the problem as “essential for the safety and security of the eco-system and for public health”.<\/p>\n

Recalling being stung 10 times while tracking a nest in 2023, he added: “I had steroids and antihistamine injections but it was very very painful. <\/p>\n

“If you can catch the queen hornets before they have a chance to make a nest it saves us a lot of bother in the summer.<\/p>\n

“We feel like we are on top of it,” he added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The project aims to intercept queen Asian hornets as they “emerge in the spring from hibernation and forage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-518639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}