Yes I know its the Daily Fail, but its in other papers too..............giant hornets...........

Chuffola

Have a LOL.

Fretwired

Bellycaster said:

@Fretwired

What's that crawling up your Back?

;-)

Probably a big hornet called Bertie ... :-)

We have native hornets in the UK - Vespa crabro that can grow to between 2.5 cm and 4 cm in length. People just think they're large wasps.

monquixote

A bloke I work with keeps bees and he's been on about this for a while so I don't think it's just a scare story.

We need to take the approach the Australians have adopted to deal with mosquitos:

Zodiac51

Nice of the Daily Fail to push out a bunch of disinformation and roll a couple of separate species into one, although to be fair their journalists aren't the only ones that are too lazy to google.

Asian giant Hornets in China = Vespa mandarinia

Asian Hornets causing a problem in France = Vespa velutina nigrithorax

octatonic

monquixote said:

A bloke I work with keeps bees and he's been on about this for a while so I don't think it's just a scare story.

We need to take the approach the Australians have adopted to deal with mosquitos:

NO POOFTERS! 

holnrew

I think they're awesome.

Myranda

holnrew said:

I think they're awesome.

Giant hornets, or poofters?

I do think the giant hornets are amazing, I'm just glad they're also faaaaaaaaaar away. I do with there were more colossal insects though perhaps footlong ants... perhaps a pet praying mantis you could put on a lead and take for walks

johnnyurq

I know it is poofters riding (I say) on giant hornets all blinged up.

Evilmags

Seen an African gain hornet. They are scary as hell, and give off a bassy buzz that reminds you of their size. As Sporky pointed out 8x the volume of a wasp. And scary. My brother has to carry an epi pen in case he gets stung as he's allergic (as I suspect, are the dead chinamen )

axisus

I saw a hornet in the UK about 18 years ago. Bloody scary beast! we were walking down a footpath in some woods and it suddenly appeared in front of us hovering menacingly. It did a little 'threatening' mini lunge at us and stopped, but that was enough, we were hotfooting it in the other direction. It looked huuuuuge, but I think that was because we only ever see wasp size usually.

chillidoggy

It gets worrying when you can count the wing beats.

hungrymark

50mm sounds plenty big enough to me, and quite a lot larger (rather than a little bit larger) than a common wasp. I reckon a 6mm stinger is also quite a lot larger than that of a wasp, along with the amount of venom they deposit. If I see an aggressive-looking 3in hornet in a Japanese forest, I'm going to look to get out pretty sharpish.

digitalscream

Myranda said:

I do think the giant hornets are amazing, I'm just glad they're also faaaaaaaaaar away. I do with there were more colossal insects though perhaps footlong ants... perhaps a pet praying mantis you could put on a lead and take for walks

For what it's worth, I was in the front garden chatting to the neighbours yesterday and four of the fuckers swung by. At least I think there were four - hard to tell when everybody's scattering. I may have squealed a bit.

And possibly weed.

EDIT: Of course, I can't confirm whether they're the ones the article mentioned. There's no way in hell I'm getting close to one of the evil little bastards to check.

hungrymark

They wouldn't have been Asian Giant Hornets, probs European Hornets. Smaller, less aggressive and less venomous by all accounts. About as aggressive as a honey bee apparently - i.e. not particularly aggressive - so I think I'd rather come across a European Hornet than a normal wasp. You got lucky ;-)