Vespa Watch: Invasion monitoring of Asian hornets with hobby makers and the public (Vespa Watch)

Vespa-Watch's goal was to have beekeepers and civilians help monitor the invasion of the Asian hornet and to raise awareness of this new threat to bees, insects and humans. An important tool in this was the reporting portal vespawatch.be. This was developed by the IT team of the Institute for Nature and Forest Research and launched on 22/05/2019. From this date all reporters of suspected Asian hornets were referred to this platform. In case of a report it is necessary to add a photo. In this way, a correct identification can often be made very quickly. This is done through the iNaturalist platform. Another Citizen-Science project in which volunteers name the observations and verify reports. The reports on vespawatch.be are synchronized with iNaturalist on a daily basis. In 2018, 205 verified individuals and 42 nests were reported. In 2019, 137 and 34 were reported respectively. In 2020 these numbers will be largely exceeded.