Claire Deasy and Sam Bayley, from the National Parks and Wildlife Service team, and David Law, from David Law Tree Care, removing the first Asian hornet nest found in Ireland in September. Photograph: Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage/PA Wire
If David O’Leary hadn’t let his eye wander in a suburban beer garden last summer, the battle against a voracious predator might have been over before it began.
The creature was resting on a flagstone close to where he sat and O’Leary just had time to snap two hurried photographs before it flew off.
“It was tasting something on the ground,” the biologist who works in the School of Medicine at University College Cork recalls.
“There were wasps around because there’s ivy in the garden and it was flowering at the time, but this was twice their size.”
If the size of the winged creature caught his attention, the yellow legs and orange face held it.
“I Googled it and I was fairly certain what it was.”
O’Leary’s phone call to the National Biodiversity Data Centre (NBDC) was one the staff there both dreaded and were glad to receive.
They had suspected for some time that the Asian Hornet was either in Ireland
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