Exeter, United Kingdom - March 04, 2025 A chilling study from the University of Exeter has uncovered a staggering 1,400 species lurking in the guts of Asian hornets, exposing the terrifying appetite of these invasive beasts. Researchers dissected samples from France, Spain, Jersey, and the UK, tracking the hornets’ feast across their active season. Inside those bellies? A grisly buffet of bees, wasps, flies, beetles, butterflies, moths, and spiders. The European honey bee topped the list, found in every nest and nearly all larvae, but these winged terrors don’t stop there—their diet’s a sprawling nightmare. Asian hornets, now swarming western Europe, are a scourge authorities can’t squash, with nests torched yearly on the UK mainland. “They’re known to prey on honey bees, but until now, we didn’t grasp their full menu,” warned lead author Siffreya Pedersen. “It shifts wildly by season and region—they’re ruthless, adaptable hunters.” Using deep sequencing, the team probed over 1,500 larvae guts, fed by adult hornets. Of the top 50 prey species, 43 flirt with flowers—including Europe’s big three pollinators: the European honey bee, buff-tailed bumblebee, and red-tailed bumblebee. “Insects keep ecosystems ticking—pollination, decomposition, pest control,” Pedersen stressed. “Most are already crumbling under habitat loss and pollution. These hornets pile on the pain.” Dr Peter Kennedy from Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute didn’t mince words: “This is hard proof of the menace Asian hornets pose as they invade Europe.” The study, backed by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the British Beekeepers Association, pegged 1,449 “operational taxonomic units” in the larvae—over half pinned as specific species, though some remain a mystery. Published in Science of the Total Environment under the title “Broad ecological threats of an invasive hornet revealed through a deep sequencing approach,” this research—fueled by samples from the Jersey Asian Hornet Group, INRAe, University of Vigo, and DEFRA—sounds a dire alarm as these predators chew through nature’s backbone.