predation mode, the hornets seemed oblivious to the fuss. They were not afraid of humans. They just carried on hawking. Inspectors could walk right up to them and stick them in a net. Keeping an eye on the insects as they flew off was trickier. At first, in the hope of improving the hornets’ visibility, the inspectors netted the insects, taped feathers to their abdomens and released them. But the hornets didn’t cooperate; instead they stopped at nearby trees to remove the cumbersome tags and zoomed off. The inspectors got their eye in eventually and abandoned the approach. It was not worth the hassle, you could see a hornet flying without a feather and get a good feel for the direction. After much perseverance, lines of sight were collected. The team was closing in.
One o’clock. Wednesday 28 September 2016
Graham Royle, a Cheshire-based seasonal bee inspector, had arrived in Tetbury the night before. He was among those providing relief to the 20-strong task force. More than 100 sites had been visited over the previous week, 50 traps deployed and dozens of fresh hornet sightings authenticated. A total of 94 separate observations would eventually be documented. Graham himself recorded a decent line of sight from a hedge that very morning, having trapped and released a hornet close to some ivy. Just before lunchtime, word came through from the command centre: ‘We’ve got an intersect.’
As it turned out, the flight lines – four or five good ones – which were plotted on a map didn’t converge neatly at one spot, but the criss-crossing did hint at a patch on the outskirts of Tetbury. Sixteen inspectors congregated in a car park. Teams of two, each provided with a map, started walking a section of this patch. It was not long afterwards that Graham, and fellow inspector Gordon Bull, found the nest. The garden with the cypress trees was a mere 600 metres from where the first hornet was spotted 23 days before.
Photos of the hornet’s nest were emailed for confirmation to Dr Quentin Rome at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris – he has studied the Asian hornet’s advance with grim fascination for more than a decade. The nest was treated with a pesticide called Ficam B, an odourless white dust which is relatively harmless to humans but lethal to insects. Within an hour the nest was a mass grave.
The pumpkin-sized ball of chewed wood fibre was shipped to Sand Hutton for full analysis. The entire European population of Asian hornets belongs to just one of 13 subtypes known from the native range, implying a single introduction event, and genetic analysis later confirmed that the Tetbury hornets were of this same subtype. This suggested that they had indeed crossed the English Channel, rather than arriving independently from Asia. Further nests remained a possibility. Residents were asked to remain vigilant and bee inspectors would stay on for a further two weeks until the Tetbury outbreak was declared over.
Woolacombe, North Devon. One year later
As he did every day at this time of the year, retired physics teacher Martyn Hocking headed up the valley to visit his bees. At his back the mid-afternoon sun was still high over the sea. It was best to visit the apiary while the occupants were out and about: there would be fewer to deal with. He heard the hum before he saw the hives; right now, they were drowning in late summer bracken and barely visible.
Giving the first hive a generous blast from his smoker, he lifted the lid and administered a dose of sugar syrup. A large dark insect flitted past. Too big for a honeybee drone. The thing hovered for a moment, offering an unmistakable view of a yellow-orange band on an otherwise black abdomen. One of Martyn’s bees writhed in the grip of the larger insect, which seconds later darted off, vanishing into the emerald background as quickly as it had arrived.
‘Let it be remembered how powerful the influence of a single introduced tree or mammal has been shown to be.’
On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, 1859
The 16 July 1898 edition of the Daily Mail devotes a single paragraph to the revelation that unusual creatures were on the loose in one of London’s better-heeled districts and defying all attempts at capture. According to the paper, ‘The wild animals on Hampstead Heath have just received an unexpected addition in the shape of two monkeys which have escaped from custody and are now enjoying a free and open life on the salubrious heights.’ A reward offered for the safe return of the simians – escaped pets from the nearby Bull and Bush tavern – proved unnecessary: a couple of days later the fugitives slunk back to the drinking house. Liberty hadn’t agreed with them. ‘They were in a deplorably dirty and woe-begone condition,’ as one account had it.
It turns out that Hampstead Heath, a windswept expanse on a sandy ridge to the north of the city, is no stranger to the exotic. In 1944, monkey business was again reported from the Heath, the arboreal frolics of a pair dubbed Jack and Jill causing disturbance on this occasion. Things didn’t end much better that time: Jill was shot and her dejected playmate handed himself in to the authorities. Then there was the young seal fished from a pond in 1926 having alarmed nocturnal anglers by ‘barking like a dog with a sore throat’. Other tales tell of a phantom gorilla, of giant spiders, of marauding bands of wild pigs.
For the people of London, the Heath is a little piece of countryside on their doorstep, an oasis in which to de-stress and reconnect with nature. Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth and Constable were among the many poets and artists in thrall to its bucolic charms, its wild and unspoilt landscapes. So precious is this place that the threat of quarrying and house-building prompted an 1871 Act of Parliament protecting for ever ‘the natural aspect and state of the Heath’.
But taking a stroll on the eastern end of the Heath one chilly autumnal morning in 2017, I was struck by just how much around me wasn’t ‘natural’ in the sense of representing native British fauna and flora. The most obvious example was the resident flock of a hundred or so ring-necked parakeets with their frequent shrill calls. With eyes closed, I could have been roaming a Darjeeling tea estate. The birds originate from sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia and the stories to explain their introduction are every bit as colourful as their plumage. The most enduring legend is that they flew off the set of The African Queen during filming of the 1951 movie at Isleworth studios. Others point the finger at Jimi Hendrix for releasing a pair on Carnaby Street at the height of the Swinging Sixties. More probable is that London’s parakeet population – the current estimate is 30,000 and growing – established itself after successive escapes from pet shops and aviaries. Perhaps not as numerous as in other parts of the capital, where parakeets are accused of beating woodpeckers and nuthatches to the choicest nesting sites, the Heath’s contingent has been around for decades and seems to coexist happily with the locals. Then there were the grey squirrels. Victorians were the first to take a shine to the bushy-tailed rodents from North America and did their darnedest to spread them around the countryside. Woodland managers and red squirrel lovers alike have been gnashing their teeth ever since.
There’s not much natural about the landscape either. Like every other part of Britain, Hampstead Heath has been managed and manipulated by people for centuries if not millennia. Cattle, sheep and goats – all first domesticated in the Middle East – have been raised here since the Neolithic period, suppressing forest regrowth and creating pasture. These days grazing duties fall to rabbits introduced from the Iberian Peninsula by the Normans. Or was it the Romans? Rabbits would give squirrels a run for their money for the title of ‘world’s worst pest’ – just ask an Aussie farmer – but on the Heath they get a pass because their incessant munching helps preserve the acid grassland, and in turn a community of rare heathland organisms.
