BIRD STUDY
https://doi.org/10.1080/00063657.2019.1660304

SHORT REPORTExploitation of the invasive Asian Hornet Vespa velutina by the European HoneyBuzzard Pernis apivorus
F. X. Maciàa, M. Menchettib,c, C. Corbellab, J. Grajerad and R. Vilaba

Independent Researcher, Sta. Perpètua de Mogoda, Spain; bInstitut de Biologia Evolutiva (CSIC-UPF), Barcelona, Spain; cDipartimento diBiologia, Università degli Studi di Firenze Sesto Fiorentino (Florence), Italy; dIndependent Researcher, Mataró, Spain
ABSTRACTThis paper reports the ﬁrst case of predation on the nests of Asian Hornet Vespa velutina by theEuropean Honey Buzzard Pernis apivorus, as well as the use of this resource by a breeding pair toprovision their nestlings. The Asian Hornet is listed among the 100 most invasive alien species
and is expanding in Western Europe. Our ﬁnding opens the door to a number of questions,
including the eﬀects of this additional allochthonous resource on the European Honey Buzzard
populations, as well as the potential of this raptor as a biocontrol agent.

Invasive alien species represent a major factor of thecurrent biodiversity crisis, the sixth global extinction,
second only to habitat loss and fragmentation (Macket al. 2000). Understanding predation dynamics
between native and alien species is crucial (Carlssonet al. 2009). The Asian Hornet Vespa velutina is ahighly invasive alien wasp that was introduced toFrance in 2004 (Haxaire et al. 2006) and has since
expanded across Western Europe (Smit et al. 2018 andreferences therein). The presence of this wasp creates
an important social alarm because it is a threat tonative biodiversity, to economic activities in the ﬁrst
sector (especially due to predation on Western Honey
Bee Apis mellifera) and to human health (Monceauet al. 2014).
A number of birds are known to predate on the Asian
Hornet in its native range, notably the Crested Honey
Buzzard Pernis ptilorhynchus (Becking 1989) but, todate, the few species reported as predators in Europe
have only involved birds taking individual adult wasps(e.g. European Bee-eater Merops apiaster) or attacking
abandoned nests (Eurasian Magpie Pica pica, Great TitParus major and Eurasian Nuthatch Sitta europaea;
Villemant et al. 2010). In this paper, we report the ﬁrst
case of Asian Hornet nest predation by the European
Honey Buzzard Pernis apivorus, as well as the use of thisresource by a breeding pair to provision their nestlings.
This migratory raptor breeds in Europe during thesummer and overwinters in Africa. The adults havespeciﬁc adaptations in order to prey on wasps, which
form the bulk of their diet (76.4%; Gamauf 1999).
CONTACT R. Vilaroger.vila@csic.es© 2019 British Trust for Ornithology

ARTICLE HISTORY

Received 13 June 2019
Accepted 22 August 2019

During 2011–2018 we surveyed a breeding populationof European Honey Buzzards in Catalonia, Spain. The
area covered 177 km2 (Figure 1), including theprotected area Serres del Litoral Septentrional (ZonaEspecial de Conservació ES5110011). The breeding
density of the species was relatively low (0.6-2.8 pairs/
100 km2 during 2010–2015, Macià et al. 2017).
Remains of preys were collected in one or two nests
per year, except for 2017, when no breeding pairs weredetected. In parallel, camera-traps were installed at ﬁveof these nests. For the ﬁrst time, three fragments of awasp nest with unusually large larval cells wereobserved and collected, on 2nd August 2018, from anest with nestlings (Figure 2). These fragments were
not present on the 20th July, when samples werepreviously taken. Only a few fragments of wasps were
found inside the cells, and morphological identiﬁcationof the insect species was not possible. However, basedon the nest morphology, they could only belong toeither the native European Hornet Vespa crabro, whichis uncommon in the area, or the alien Asian Hornet.
Molecular analysis of the wasp remains through DNAbarcoding, using a 658 bp fragment of themitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) genesequence, following the protocol by Dincă et al. (2013):
DNA was extracted using Chelex resin and ampliﬁed
with the primers LepF1 and LepR1. The sequences
obtained from the nest fragments were uploaded to theBOLD Identiﬁcation Engine (www.uni.boldsystems.org/index.php/IDS_OpenIdEngine) and an unambiguous
100% match to Asian Hornet was obtained.

Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (CSIC-UPF), Passeig Marítim de la Barceloneta 37, 08440, Barcelona, Spain

2F. X. MACIÀ ET AL.

Figure 1. Map of the study region. The inset shows the location of the study region and the breeding distribution range of European
Honey Buzzard (BirdLife International 2004). The green triangle represents the European Honey Buzzard nest with Asian Hornetremains, sampled in 2018. The green line shows the area that was surveyed and grey lines the county borders. Points show theAsian Hornet nests recorded each year since its arrival in 2014 to the surrounding counties. Records were obtained from theCatalan Cos d’Agents Rurals del Departament d’Agricultura, Ramaderia, Pesca i Alimentació.

This ﬁnding represents the ﬁrst unambiguous caseof predation on an Asian Hornet nest during theactive breeding period of the wasp. A few potential
cases, also by European Honey Buzzard, werementioned in the mass media but apparently not yet
scientiﬁcally conﬁrmed (Vigneaud 2013, mentioned inMonceau et al. 2014). The Asian Hornet is extremely
aggressive and venomous, and thus, it is remarkablethat the European Honey Buzzard exploits the activenests.
The main foraging range of breeding European
Honey Buzzards does not usually surpass 10 km (vanManen et al. 2011). Until 2018, no Asian Hornet nests
were documented within this distance of the nests
monitored in this study. The Asian Hornet arrived in
Catalonia in 2012 (Pujade-Villar et al. 2012-2013) andto the study region in 2014. Since then, recorded wasp
nest-to-bird nest distances were: 2014, 21 km; 2015, 29
and 42 km; 2016, 25 km; 2017, no breeding recorded.
On the contrary, in 2018 the monitored European
Honey Buzzard nest was much nearer to a number of
Asian Hornet nests, the closest being only 1.8 km away(Figure 1).

Assuming that the wasp presence records areaccurate, which is likely given the social alarm due tothe expected arrival of the species in the area, we caninfer that the European Honey Buzzard started using
the Asian Hornet to provision their oﬀspring within amaximum of a year since nests were accessible. It is
well known that this raptor has a number ofbehavioural (e.g. excavation of the wasp nests) andmorphological (e.g. densely imbricated feathers)
adaptations to predate wasps, as is also the case for its
sister species, the Crested Honey Buzzard.
Despite our discovery being limited to a few
fragments on a single nest, it opens the door to anumber of questions, and long-term quantitative
studies in various parts of the European Honey
Buzzard range will be needed to establish the extent
and evolution of the trophic exploitation of the Asian
Hornet. The eﬀects of this additional allochthonous
resource on the European Honey Buzzard populations
are especially intriguing.
Large colonies by social wasps that last 5–6 months,
such as those of the Common Wasp Vespula vulgaris
and the German Wasp Vespula germanica, are theBIRD STUDY

3Figure 2. (A) Picture of the European Honey Buzzard nest interior at the moment of the collection (2nd August 2018). Nest remains ofVespidae are visible and the one of the Asian Hornet (with larger cells) is marked with a red circle. (B) The three Asian Hornet nest
fragments analysed in the lab (scale bar represents 1 cm).

preferred food source of the European Honey Buzzard(Gamauf 1999). Thus, in principle, the species should
easily detect the Asian Hornet secondary nests, which
are spherical and large (up to 1×0.8 m), built
preferentially in tree canopies (Villemant et al. 2010)
and easier to ﬁnd compared to other native species
that nest in the ground or close to it (e.g. GermanWasp and Polistes spp.). In this sense, taking
advantage of the Asian Hornet may decrease the risk
for the European Honey Buzzard to attacks fromterrestrial or aerial predators (e.g. Northern Goshawk
Accipiter gentilis, Voskamp 2000) while manipulating
the nest and extracting the fragments suitable fortransportation.
Taking into account the dates when samples in thenest of the European Honey Buzzard were collected,
the transport of the Asian Hornet nest fragments wasmade between 20th July and 2nd August 2018,
coinciding with the period of maximum activity of theinvasive wasp colonies. The Asian Hornet builds

secondary nests mainly from August and theproduction of individuals may be active until
December (Rome et al. 2015). The European Honey
Buzzard requires more food between mid-June andSeptember, in order to provision the nestlings (Hardeyet al. 2013), but also because fuel deposition in Europe
is critical for post-nuptial migration (Hake et al. 2003).
Thus, the Asian Hornet could be a particularly
proﬁtable resource due to the huge amounts of larvae
available in the nests exactly at the time when thetrophic needs of the raptor are greatest (Rome et al.
2015).
Additionally, this raptor could be considered as apotential biocontrol agent, because it is possibly theonly European bird species capable of destroying active
Asian Hornet nests (i.e. secondary aerial nests) during
the period of maximum generation of individual
insects. Predators near the top of the food chain are
crucial in ecosystem processes and can structure thebiological communities (Schmitz et al. 2000, Sergio

4F. X. MACIÀ ET AL.

et al. 2007). It is premature to speculate about the impactof the European Honey Buzzard on the apparently
unstoppable expansion of the Asian Hornet, but it
seems wise to favour the presence of this raptor.
The bioaccumulation process means that raptors arehighly sensitive to pollutants and, in the case of theEuropean Honey Buzzard, it has been reported thepresence of neonicotinoids in the blood (Byholmet al. 2018 and references therein); a group of
insecticides which have negative eﬀects on birds(Millot et al. 2017 and references therein). This
underlines the need to eliminate from the naturalenvironment the wasp colonies treated with pesticides(Beggs et al. 2011), a practice that is frequently
ignored or even discouraged by the oﬃcial protocols(e.g. those issued by the Government of Catalonia in2018).
The discovery here reported highlights the need forresearch on the breeding biology of the European
Honey Buzzard, one of the less well-studied raptors in
Europe (Hagemeijer & Blair 1997), with the aim ofobtaining detailed information on its ecologicalrelationship with the Asian Hornet and the derived
consequences for the populations of both species.

Acknowledgements
We thank Toni Arrizabalaga and Constantí Stefanescu (Museude Ciències Naturals de Granollers) for putting in contact theauthors. Eric Corella, Xavier Larruy, José Moreno and Ramón
Sanz help in the ﬁeldwork. Diputació de Barcelona and theParc de la Serralada Litoral, Parc de la Serralada de Marinaand Parc del Montnegre i el Corredor supported theﬁeldwork. Permits were kindly issued by Servei de Fauna i
Flora de la Direcció General de Polítiques Ambientals i Medi
Natural. We are grateful to Cos d’Agents Rurals delDepartament d’Agricultura, Ramaderia, Pesca i Alimentació,
who provided records for the Asian Hornet.

ORCID
M. Menchetti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0707-7495
R. Vila http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2447-4388

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