The Azores Have Twelve Months and 49,995 Euros to Erase an Asian Hornet That Mainland Portugal Has Been Living With Since 2011

In January 2025 a nest was identified at Areias, in the parish of Rabo de Peixe on São Miguel, and the Asian hornet was confirmed in the Azores for the first time. On Monday the regional government said it has joined an internationally funded project to remove it, and the project has a hard end date: 31 August 2027.

The Secretaria Regional da Agricultura e Alimentação (Regional Secretariat for Agriculture and Food) is a partner, alongside the Fundação Gaspar Frutuoso, in a newly approved twelve-month operation titled "Azores Biosecurity Action for Rapid Eradication of the Asian Hornet (Vespa velutina)". It runs from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027. The total eligible funding is 49,995.75 euros, paid in full by the International Union for Conservation of Nature with European Union money.

That figure is not arbitrary. It is 4.25 euros short of the maximum a single project can draw from the European Invasive Alien Species Rapid-Response Fund, which awards between 10,000 and 50,000 euros for work lasting up to twelve months. The fund is a 2.1 million euro instrument run through IUCN Save Our Species, co-financed by the European Union and open to organisations across the EU, explicitly including the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands. Its current call runs to 10 February 2027 or until the money is gone.

What the money buys

The Fundação Gaspar Frutuoso takes the technical, scientific and financial implementation. The Secretariat contributes to execution and follow-up on the ground, through the Serviço de Desenvolvimento Agrário de São Miguel (São Miguel Agricultural Development Service) and the Direção Regional de Agricultura, Veterinária e Alimentação (Regional Directorate for Agriculture, Veterinary Services and Food).

The stated focus is to act in the earliest phases of an invasion, which the regional government says raises the odds of containment and eradication. In practice that means four things: mapping where the species is, locating and destroying nests quickly, training the technical staff who have to do it, and keeping the public and farmers reporting sightings.

The response to the 2025 detection had already put some of that in place. The regional services set up a specialist brigade, drew a security perimeter around the find, installed traps and began monitoring apiaries. The new project funds a further year of it, at a moment when the population on São Miguel is believed to be small enough to be wiped out rather than merely managed.

Regional secretary António Ventura called the approval a reinforcement of the region's capacity against a species that threatens beekeeping, biodiversity and ecosystem balance, and said early detection and rapid intervention are fundamental. Protecting the territory, he said, requires prevention, knowledge and the capacity to intervene.

Why twelve months is the whole story

The arithmetic of Vespa velutina explains the urgency better than any statement of intent. According to the national action plan drawn up by the interministerial monitoring committee for the species, a single mature nest holds between 2,000 and 13,000 wasps and more than 150 founder queens. Each of those founders may build at least six new nests the following year. Nests reach a metre in height and 50 to 80 centimetres across, and are usually built in trees above five metres, which is high enough that they are often found only in autumn when the leaves drop. A queen can measure 3.5 centimetres.

Compounding at that rate, the difference between finding two nests and finding two hundred is one season. This is why the IUCN fund exists at all, and why it pays for speed rather than for long-term management.

The mainland is the counterfactual

Portugal knows what the other outcome looks like. The species was accidentally introduced to France in 2004 and moved outward from there: confirmed in Spain in 2010, in mainland Portugal and Belgium in 2011, in Italy at the end of 2012, and later in Germany and the United Kingdom. In Portugal it was first found in Viana do Castelo in September 2011, in four apiaries, and in the Braga district in December 2012. It has been spreading south and inland ever since, and the national plan describes it as established in the north and centre of the country.

In July 2016 the European Commission listed Vespa velutina as an invasive alien species of Union concern under Regulation (EU) 1143/2014, the legal instrument that obliges member states to detect, eradicate or manage listed species. Being on that list is what makes an eradication attempt in the Azores eligible for EU money in the first place.

The main damage is to honeybees. The hornet hunts at hive entrances, and Portuguese beekeepers in the north have spent a decade adapting to it. The national plan is careful about the human risk: it notes that Vespa velutina is not individually more dangerous to people than the European hornet, but that its large, visible nests raise the probability of contact, which in practice is what produces stings.

What this means for expats

• If you live on São Miguel: reporting matters more here than anywhere else in Portugal, because the project's success depends on finding nests while there are few. Sightings and suspected nests go to the ICNF's reporting portal at stopvespa.icnf.pt, which feeds the national database used by the ICNF, the food and veterinary authority DGAV and the agricultural research institute INIAV.
• If you keep bees anywhere in Portugal: apiary monitoring is part of the funded work in the Azores, and on the mainland it is the standard control measure. Late summer and early autumn are when hornet pressure on hives peaks.
• Do not attempt a nest yourself. Nest destruction in Portugal is a job for the regional services or the fire brigade, not a ladder and an aerosol. The height and the size of the colony are the reasons.
• Identification: the Asian hornet has a black head with an orange or yellowish face, a dark velvet body with a thin yellow band and a single orange-yellow abdominal segment, dark wings, and brown legs with yellow tips. Those yellow leg ends are the reliable field mark; the European hornet does not have them.
• If you garden or walk in the north: nests are frequently in tall trees but also on buildings and structures, in rural and urban settings alike, and become conspicuous from May onwards.

The Azores have spent the past few years learning how expensive it is to run things at island scale, from EU-funded infrastructure that arrives late to a dairy sector where two cents a litre reshapes a whole year. Fifty thousand euros is a rounding error against those numbers. It is also, if the twelve months are used well, the cheapest thing the region will ever spend on this insect. The mainland's alternative has been running for fifteen years and has no end date at all.