Richard Williamson's Country Life Column

Then they appeared again in 1978 in the wall of a house in Worthing, but the owner wasn't too sure about living with these very large insects which have such a reputation.

At the time I worked out a method of relocating the nest to woodland near West Dean. A beekeeper was going to smoke the insects into docility at night, and they would then be shaken carefully into an old rainwater barrel. The barrel would then be hoisted up by rope into an oak and the bung pulled out when it was hoped that the insects would accept the transplant and carry on with their original nest in their new surroundings.

I noticed that pundits who advised on the scheme would not actually be around on the day, but that didn't put me off. Probably fortunately, the man in Worthing decided to co-exist with the hornets, so the experiment was called off.

Twice over the next 30 years I have seen a solitary hornet in the garden and hoped that a nest somewhere might be found, but no luck. Until this year. In early May one of these glorious red and yellow insects was seen several times in the garden. We used to watch out for her every day, and if she did not turn up we felt quite anxious for her safety. Then suddenly she would appear again, droning deeply as she flew past, a strange sound almost like a heavy lorry in the distance.

See the West Sussex Gazette of August 18