It was definitely probably a hornet, possibly a giant
hornet, possibly if the rumour-mill was worth listening to, even a giant Asian bee-killer
hornet. And if it wasn’t the effect was the same, as I was both excited and
worried. If you look up anything about hornets you will find that they are
aggressive, dangerous, and eat all sorts of good things like bees, and bad
things like wasps, and even doing that doesn’t improve their reputation.
I have to admit to having had some investment in this one
actually being a hornet – I have been pointing out hornets to people for years,
noting their generally placid behaviour, their brown and faded yellow stripes
that make them look like tired old wasps, their aimless wandering about the
place and their tendency to settle and appear to have to catch their breath.
All of which are in fact characteristics of the hornet mimic hoverfly, which
this was, as I discovered when it was pointed out to me that I ought to look it
up. And thank goodness that it was not a specimen of the true hornet, which is
aggressive, dangerous, as previously mentioned, as well as fast, noisy and
which dresses in hazard warning tape. Hornet mimic hoverflies have evolved to
look like hornets, to avoid being chased and eaten. They certainly have done
well out of fooling me, even though I would not have chased or eaten them. But
it’s certainly considerably more than one-nil to the hornet mimic hoverfly:
indeed, a walkover, a whitewash, a rout. They’ve done well out of pretending to
be hornets. And being a gentle soul I take my defeat manfully and praise my
opponent. Protective mimicry is great, and clearly works. I admire it. I admit
defeat.
But, if a handful of hornets arrived in my garden I would
think very seriously about taking action, phone the person who deals with such
things – the council I suppose, though a moment’s thought would tell me that
the relevant department was probably privatised years ago, and its work is now
done digitally with a three-month waiting list and payment required by some
technology that hasn’t reached me yet. And I think I would be similarly
disposed towards urgent action if half a dozen hornet mimic hoverflies started
hovering over the patio. Their mimicry would not help them. The problem is that
human evolution has moved so fast that it has left other bits of evolution far
behind, specifically the retention of hornet-like coloration by the hornet
mimic hoverfly. Hoverflies evolved taking benefit from a chance mutation that caused
a similarity to hornets, but which unfortunately makes humans more likely to
kill them, which we can now do with ease, theoretically; that is, we have the
means, though not always success in deploying them.
An
addition to the situation is the Asian hornet, now successfully ‘invading’
France, and threatening British shores with its reckless violence, voracious
appetite and barbarian reputation, heavy baggage to add to that of any
migrating species, which if it does any damage to any species already here is
doomed to be termed ‘invasive’.
Asian
hornets may already be here. On 14 August 2015 the Central Somerset Gazette posted a story about Sally Bancroft, who owns
Bancroft carpets we are told, and who spotted a wasp-like inspect on the
balcony of her mother’s Glastonbury home.
‘It flew
into a cobweb, it was stuck,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t believe the size of it. It
was as big as my husband’s thumb. It was about two inches long and its stinger
was out, and it was about 5mm. When we Googled it, and from the description, it
sounded like a Giant Asian Hornet. I don’t know if there have been any other
sightings.”
The
Central Somerset Gazette added ‘Mrs Bancroft stressed
that she wasn’t a nature expert but it fitted the description perfectly. She
said it had a yellow head and legs. Mrs Bancroft’s only regret is she didn’t
manage to catch it as now she can’t get definitive proof if it was a Giant
Asian Hornet, the world’s largest hornet, or not.’
Note that the Asian hornet has become the Giant Asian hornet. Mrs
Bancroft’s curiosity is admirable, but a more likely scenario was that reported
by the
Daily Mail on 21 May 2014 - an Asian
hornet 2 ½ inches long entered a kitchen in Staffordshire and was sprayed with
fly-spray, expiring after ten minutes. No doubt the fears about potential
invasions of Asian hornets, giant or otherwise – they eat 50 bees a day,
according to ‘some experts’ cited by the Daily Mail 21 May 2014 – will have
many good honest folk, and Daily Mail
readers, reaching for the can of Raid when they see a hornet mimic hoverfly.
What price protective evolution then?
