One Gardener's Three Traps Killed 361 Invasive Hornet Queens in a Single Summer
Two Million Hornets
A newcomer to Spain's rainy northern mountains trades city life for a stone cottage and a garden, only to meet wildfires, drought, and the Asian hornet. Joining the local council's spring trapping campaign, he checks three traps weekly and counts 361 drowned queens in eight weeks — potentially two million fewer hornets by autumn. Around him, villages empty, gentrification creeps in, and old knowledge fades.
The hornets have no natural predators here, I tell myself. Humans created this mess; now we need to figure out what to do.