’Much maligned horntail stirs up a hornet’s nest

WHEN you have a reputation for knowing about wildlife, you get emergency calls.

The other day a neighbour phoned on her mobile because she was terrified to go into her house: there was an enormous hornet in her kitchen.

This was interesting. There are no hornets in Ireland. They are confined to Continental Europe and North America. But the giant Asian hornet is invading France and Spain. It is devastating honey-bee colonies and has killed two Frenchmen this year, after apparently arriving from China in a crate of pottery. Could it have arrived in Ireland? But when I bravely entered the neighbour’s kitchen, I was relieved the offending insect was not a hornet but a female wood wasp. The wood wasp, or greater horntail, is a scary insect. They are large and noisy, they come in yellow-and-black warning colours, and they have what looks like a vicious stinger on their rear end. But it’s all a bluff — they are harmless insects with a fascinating life cycle.