Asian hornet nest located in Guernsey and removed from tree

Anyone who thinks they may have seen an Asian hornet or a nest is urged to report it

A large Asian hornet nest has been successfully located and removed by experts in Guernsey.

The Asian Hornet Team (AHT) successfully tracked a worker hornet after it was reported as trapped inside a net protecting cherries in Torteval.

By following it, and using bait stations, they found other worker hornets and located a well-hidden secondary nest in a sycamore tree.

The secondary nest contained the queen hornet.

The landowner gave permission for a cherry-picker to be used for the team to access, destroy and remove the nest on Thursday.

Francis Russell, project coordinator for the Asian hornet strategy, said: "This is the first large secondary nest that we have found on the island this year after not having had any other confirmed reports of Asian hornets for about two months.

"This nest was surprisingly difficult to find even though we had as many as eight hornets coming and going from our bait stations."

It is thought that queen is likely to have arrived on the island in April or May and evaded capture before establishing the nest.

Mr Russell added: "It's great that we have found the nest so early in the year before it got quite large with greater numbers of worker hornets heading out each day to feast on our native pollinators like bees.

"There may well be more nests across the island which we will be very keen to track down so as always, we are encouraging everyone to keep sending in photos and report anything suspicious to us."

Follow BBC Guernsey on Twitter and Facebook. Send your story ideas to [e-mail].