Recognising the Asian hornet
(copie 1)
The Asian Hornet is very easy to recognise because it is the only social wasp in Europe with such a dark livery: the adults are brownish-black and appear, from a distance, as dark spots on the nest .
The varietyV. velutinanigrithorax has an entirely velvety black-brown thorax and brown abdominal segments bordered by a thin yellow band.
Only the4th segment of the abdomen is almost entirely orange-yellow.
The head is black, the face orange-yellow and the legs yellow at the tips.
With its dark livery, it is difficult to confuse with the European hornet,Vespa crabro.
Measuring around 3 cm in length, it is also slightly smaller than the latter.
The difference is particularly clear in the queens, which reach a maximum size of 3.2 cm in V. velutina and 3.5 cm in V. crabro (Villemant et al., 2006b;Rome & Villemant, 2011).
