Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans she has to expand the use of new (a) tracking and (b) monitoring technologies to improve the effectiveness of the National Bee Unit’s work to (i) locate and (ii) eradicate yellow-legged Asian hornet nests.

Since 2016 the Animal and Plant Health Agency’s National Bee Unit (NBU) have responded to incursions of Yellow Legged Hornet (YLH) into Great Britain. The NBU has developed a fine-tuned and effective response which allows them to find and destroy nests to prevent YLH establishing. During 2025 the NBU has drawn on support from other members of staff within APHA and used new technology to deliver the response. For tracking, the inspectors have been trialling Robor Nature Units which use a handheld device to add tiny trackers to hornets. The tracker is then used to follow the hornet and find the nest so it can be destroyed and removed. For monitoring, field tests have been carried out using VespAI, a visual monitoring system developed by the University of Exeter which uses artificial intelligence to carry out surveillance for YLH. As of 23 October 2025, the NBU have found and destroyed a total of 155 Yellow Legged Hornet nests.