Hello, everyone, my name is John Hill. I'm president of the British Bee Veterinary Association. Which in fact has just celebrated its 10th anniversary on April 1st.
I want to talk to this morning about a honey bee pest that is coming our way and unfortunately, I think there's other implications, for the UK and it is an invasive species which is not pleasant. So really what we're going to be talking about this morning is the Asian hornet. And I will be going through some of its biology and its behaviour and so forth, give you some idea of the problem ahead.
So, any invasive species that that comes into the country can cause immense damage to flora and fauna in it in its new environment. Some cause damage, some do not, but history has shown us that some invasive species have had a profound effect on the flora and fauna of its new environment. So we take for example, say rabbits and cane toads in Australia.
Rabbits introduced on which went, as they say, they bred very rapidly and caused immense amount of damage in large parts of Australia, so they had to put up rabbit-proof fences. Cane toads were brought in to deal with pests and sugar cane plantations, and unfortunately, they did that, but unfortunately their skin is toxic, and so an awful lot of predators who were trying to feed on cane toads died. So there were instances of dingoes being found dead with a cane toad in their mouth.
We go on to things like the Asian longhorn beetle in the United States, cause immense damage to to forests. The other things the sea lamprey and the Great Lakes cause a lot of trouble to the fish there, and then the New Zealand flatworm in British gardens. Now this is the New Zealand flatworm, Arthur denticus triangulatus.
And Unfortunately, it's this particular creature kills about 200 earthworms a year, and I have it in my garden, I've had them there for the last 30 years. And I have hardly a worm in my garden because of these creatures. Very prevalent in British gardens and Irish gardens, but not funny enough, on the continent of Europe.
And what is heading our way is this one, this is the Asian hornet, Vespa Vellatina nirothorax, a very beautiful insect, but a top predator. And what happened, in fact, was a solitary queen arrived into southwest France in 2004 in garden porcelain from China. They're very strong flyers.
And it spread rapidly at up to 50 kilometres per year. Remember, still just one queen produced it. The human traffic probably helped to assist its spread, say, from being transported around the country.
And then from sporadic nests were then found in the UK from 2016, with a large increase in 2023, with 72 nests found and destroyed. And it's well established in the Channel Islands. They have, really have been fighting, what effectively is almost a losing battle against it for this last number of years.
And we reckon it's now established in the south of England, and it's been proven is that some of the nests were not found and destroyed, and that certainly queens have overwintered in the south of England. So Vespa Valentina Nyrothorax. It's smaller than our, European hornet, Vespa crabro, which, does, predate on honey bees, but in fact is nowhere near a pest, bigger pest as this particular creature here.
Vespa velaina has several subspecies, one of which is agrothorax, which means black thorax. There are other, subspecies in the Far East. Distinctive orange head, orange stripe on the posterior abdomen, and yellow legs.
So it's he got yellow legs, and that is why the description of it is now being changed from Asian hornet to the yellow-legged hornet. Now, this was back in the newspaper in 2013. Everybody is jumping up and down saying, oh, this is the hornet, but in fact this is not.
This is the European hornet, Vespa crabro. It's a larger hornet than Vespavilatina, but in fact, and as I say, it's less harm harm to honey bees. This actually really shows the distribution of some of these hornets.
They're about. I think about 24 species of hornets worldwide. if we look.
This really say is that the one that's coming our way, Vespa, Valettina, it came from China and the area in Brown is its distribution in the Far East right down the Malay Peninsula and headed into Korea, but it's not in Japan as yet. Anyway, came over and garden portland in southwest France and it's then spread from there from then on. Now, Vespa laro, the European hornet does in fact have a distribution right across, right across Asia as well.
And then this other species, Vespa orientalis is in the, North Africa and the Middle East areas around around the Mediterranean. Different species. Again, just to get a really good look at this particular creature, very distinctive features, the the yellow legs, the orange stripe across the posterior abdomen, and the orange head.
Now, this actually just shows the distribution of the essa Vilaina in 2019, so it'd gone from 2004 to 2019 very extensively progressed. I'm gonna show you just how this progression. So there it started in 2004 in southwest France, and this is its spread.
Very rapidly over the years. And it's heading towards Eastern Europe, and in fact, we'll just let this run again. Now, Eastern, the whole of Europe has about 18 million hives and and really say Eastern Europe has a huge apicultural industry, and this horne is heading straight for them and it's going to cause immense damage in that area.
And you can see that there have been some incursions into Britain over this last number of years. Right, so we go through the life cycle, it's only the queen survives the winter. And so that's a mated queen, and she comes out of hibernation April.
Starts construction of a primary small nest, and cells and making cells and it's contained in a paper envelope, OK? The nest is secured with a PTO. Now PTO is really like a stalk which holds it, say, to a surface like to a ceiling or whatever, and that's called a petol.
Now, we must not make a mistake because the PTO also describes the little neck really between on an insect, on I say on a both a honey bee and on a hornet between the thorax and the abdomen is also called a PTO. So it's just not to to cause any confusion with that. So the nest is secured with this PTL and the entrance is always on the underside.
The queen lays eggs and rears its first workers, and in that case, the both the workers and the queen cooperate to make the nest. And so everybody does all the different jobs that are there at that time. And then once in fact it goes through that, they move on then to what they call the polyethnic period, the polyethnic period, and that is really when everybody starts to do their own individual jobs, so the queen will concentrate then more on egg laying.
And and increasing the nest that and the other worker hornets will then continue building the nest and doing other things of helping to rear the workers. Once that is established, then they then relocate to a secondary nest, and that tends to be usually higher in a tree. Special small nest is usually lowered down near the ground, but they then migrate really to this nest higher, much bigger nest, start to make a much bigger nest higher, say in a tree or wherever.
Now they don't actually swarm. It's not a, it's a gradual move. It's not a swarm, but, but that's the way it works.
Now, within the, the, the nest itself, the eggs are glued, are laid in a cell and glued to the base. The egg hatches into larvae and is again is glued to the base so it won't fall out. It undergoes 4 malts and then spins a silken cocoon at the 5th moult to become a pupa.
It goes then through metamorphosis, a miraculous occurrence, and then say within a primary nest, a small primary nest, from the time that an egg is laid to the time that a worker emerges is 50 days. Now when they get up to the much bigger main nest, that period of time from egg to emergence is only 29 days. And the reason for that is just the sheer heat that is produced within the main nest that accelerates the metamorphosis.
So the queen is laying, and very often the herd egg laying will peak at around about 100 eggs a day. And then again, it is funny strange thing. Let's say for example, if a nest gets destroyed, the queen, if she survives that will go around and seek out another Asian hornet nest, and the, the queens will fight until one takes over.
And so a queen could you know, usurp another nest, take on another nest. So it's a, it's actually a very highly evolved survival strategy. So the nested large is in the horizontal layers, as pillars between the layers are strengthened, the petol is strengthened and smeared with the pellant every day to ward off ants.
And this is one of the things that could be their, their weak point would be ants, but they thought of that, and so the queen goes up every day to the peel and smears. Anti ant repellent onto the PTO from little glands on their underside called the Vandervee glands. So again, a remarkable strategy.
September to October, the queen starts to lay unfertilized eggs, which then become males. This is a process called Parthenogenesis, where unfertilized eggs can develop and in this case they develop into males and it's it really tends to reduce the workerdestine eggs at that stage. Parthenogenesis is a very common, strategy with an awful lot of insects, and in fact, and in marine creatures, again a remarkable process.
Anyway, about a week later then, the queen then starts to lay eggs, that are just into larger cells, and these will develop into queens. The mechanism that determines of an egg develops into a queen or a worker is unknown. Anyway, by even say around the beginning of October, the nest could produce anything up to 300 queens and 600 males, and even more, say, in a, in a mild autumn.
So it's quite a lot of reproduction and these then will go out and get mated, so the males go out and then the queens go out, they get mated, and then once mated, then the queens do not go back to the nest. They disperse and they go and find somewhere to hibernate. Right, and then all other hornets, that's the male, any of the males that are still left, they will all die, and all the horned workers in the nest, they all die.
So the only, it's only the mated queens survive the winter. So very quickly to go through this life cycle again, if we go to the left. So number one, they emerges the founder queens from hibernation, then goes on to the first embryo nest made by the founder queen, and then she produces the first brood of worker hornets, and that emerged by April, May, and then they move then on to the much bigger nest during the summer, and the colony, the, the colony grows, starts to grow rapidly.
And a mature, say, active nest there's several 1000 individuals, and then towards, say, anything from mid July through to November, with the emergence of the sexual adults. They go out and become mated, and then they . And then the, the mated queens will hibernate, the rest of the colony dies.
So we can see just the at the top through the little initial paper embryo nest, and it works and that moves on to the much more mature nest on the right, where the, the main colony will be will be building it up. So if we start again, just show and say, the queen initially starting to make a small nest, a little paper nest, nest gets bigger, they then migrate from . To the smaller nest here up into a much more mature one in a very often a tree.
And we can see here, this is a fully. A fully mature nest and coming into the autumn. Again, probably the individuals in this nest are probably all gone and died now by this stage because the leaves are falling off and we can actually can see it in the tree.
Very often it's very difficult to see this nest, during the summer when the leaves are on the trees. This is the entrance, the underneath, the only entrance where they The horns go in and out of the nest, and it's underneath. This shows how a nest in fact is.
Expanded. So you have here these little areas that look like, dorms, and this is these hornets are building these, whereas actually on the inside of the nest, you cannot see, there are hornets in there licking away the walls. So these bees then are making new walls on the outside that will join up with these dorms and that allows then the nest to expand outwards as the other hornets are inside licking the walls away.
Just a little side issue, this is a slightly different species, this is the Far East. And this is hornet farming. This is a a hornet farmer, and what they're actually doing is they're rearing large nests like this.
They then take them apart and they sell the larva and the pupa to restaurants as a delicacy. For very large amounts of money. Now just to go on a little side issue again is Vespa Valentina in South Korea.
The, Vespa Valentina arrived in South Korea at much the same time as in France. It tended to spread more slowly, but again it was much more common in urban and suburban areas, in other words, in towns and cities. And why?
Because there were so Much more fast food being dumped into waste, areas, waste paper bins, whatever that's, allowed them the hornets to go in and they loved the burgers and everything else that were were being thrown away. Feeding. Now, what actually happens is that vessel Vlaina love honey bees.
They, their main predator, their main source of food, their main forage is honey bees. And so workers will prey on bees by hawking or hovering outside their hives and trying to pluck bees coming out of the air. So they grab the bees in midair, they dismember them and take the thorax back to the nest.
The adults cannot eat. They can't eat through the thorax of, of honey bee, because it's too big. The pieces of meat cannot get past the petiol, between the thorax and the abdomen.
So they feed it to their larvae, and they eat these voraciously and digest the, thorax of the, of the honey bees. And what happens then is the adults then stimulate the larvae to regurgitate food. And so they can therefore feed off this regurgitation, and that's how the adults get their food supply.
And they, so the workers can also acquire nectar, honeydew, honey from for carbohydrate supply, especially in late summer. So this actually shows the larva of Vespa valentina, and you can see that the adult is feeding them there, and then the adult on the right here is stimulating the larva to regurgitate some food. So the lower photograph shows a drop of regurgitated food that the adult will then feed on.
And again showing the, the hornet attending to its larvae and pupa. And this photograph shows an Asian hornet hawking outside of a hive, and it's ready just to pluck a a bees as it flies off, grab it in the air. And you can see really that these bees are doing their best to to, to guard their their hive against the attack of the of the or the the attack of the hornet.
Again, showing some hawking. And again, this shows, you know, a, a poor old honey bee has been grabbed. The, the hornet takes it to and hangs off a twig and dismembers it, takes the head off, takes the abdomen off, takes the legs off the wings, and it just takes the thorax back to the hive or to its nest.
So, what is the effect of the invasion in France? Well, honey production is way, way down by upwards, upwards of 2/3, and, in fact, this was actually in 2016, just now quite a long time ago, 50% of the colonies were destroyed or badly affected, OK? And so colonies, very often they don't collapse not due to the predation of the of the of the honey bees, it's more the fact of starvation.
The bees cannot get out to get enough food into the colony to keep it going. That's the honey bees are a major part part of the organs diet. And unfortunately, the colonies are becoming more common.
5 per square kilometres in the countryside and 10 per square kilometre in the urban areas because there is more food in urban areas. They're a danger to the public, not only safe from the stings, especially if you go near a, a nest, you will be running a serious risk of being badly stung, but also if they are very defensive, what they will do is that the hornets will turn their abdomen round and they will spit venom at you in a, in a bid to blind you. So that's, they're dangerous.
So destruction and really destruction of colonies needs specialist teams, and that is expensive. The normal bee suits that we wear are not good enough to withstand, hornet stings. You need special, special suits, and also if the nets are very high, you need cherry pickers, you need teams, you need it's, it's expensive.
Anyway, despite the very small gene pool, as I say, there's only a single queen coming in from China in 2004. It has managed to maximise its genetic variation tremendously, with gene recombination in meiosis. So even though there is this narrow bottleneck of genetics, it has been extraordinarily successful at spreading.
And in fact, there's still no evidence at all that there's been further incursions of hornets from the far East into this sort of gene pool as it were, in, in Europe. It's still down to one queen. Now, is there any other biological control?
And the simple answer to this really is, is hornets are very few enemies. In China, there's some bird eating bee eating birds or predators. There is Apis cerana, it's the eastern honey bee.
Got distinguished, we have the western honey bee, which is called Apis mellifera. The eastern honey bee is also a different species and is known as Apis cerana. And it does have a technique against, against hornets which I'll come to shortly.
They vibrate their wing bustles and create heat and cook the hornet at 43 degrees, whereas they can tolerate up to 47 degrees. There's a few other various organisms here that can affect hornets, but they really do not have a huge effect and they really cannot be relied on to have any great effect against them at all. No, this is the Apis cerana, the eastern honey bee.
It doesn't produce anywhere near as much honey, say, as the western honey bee. It is fun. Anyway, this actually shows what it does to a hornet, and you can see the head, the orange head, and this is actually a giant Asian hornet's a larger species, and it's being bowled by Apis cerana.
And what happens is they bow it completely, they then vibrate their wing muscles very vigorously to create heat, and indeed they cook. The hornet to death. And really what it is that the hornet will die at 43 °C, whereas the bees can tolerate a temperature up to 48.
Remarkable, but unfortunately, our honey bees, the western honey bees do not have this behaviour, they do not do this. The other thing that's been discovered is that there are certain types of pitcher plants. Pitcher plants are, are, are plants that eat insects, and pitcher plants, in fact, are killing hornets.
And in fact, quite a few beekeepers around France now plant pitcher plants around their apriies. Now it's only a certain number, there's about 150 different species of pitcher plants, but only a few of them, which in fact have this ability to kill hornets. Anyway, the other thing is that people have been using is to try and then trap Asian hornets.
Now this is the whole idea, say, of, of traps is going, been going through various revolutions. One of the main problems with that is if you put up a trap, it kills everything. So you're killing an awful lot of other good pollinators as well.
So a lot of the the the traps are trying to devise ways in which you will kill. Attract and take in hornets and kill them, but will allow what we call bycatch, anything else kind of ability to escape. And, and certainly there have been traps to design now which are in fact are better at doing that.
But to give you an idea just how destructive it can be to old pollinators, if you look at this little diagram, say, on the lower right, you can see that these were insects that were caught in a trap, and you can You see a whole lot of vespa crabro were caught, and then there's a whole variety of other wasps and bees, and then moths and butterflies were caught as well and also at the bottom a huge number of flies. Huge number. And the problem is that only 3 Asian hornets were caught.
So all those other pollinators were sort of bycatch for them, which unfortunately is not good because we don't want to reduce our our pollinator population at all. So that has improved. This is another way in which some people have done it, they put cages in front of their hives.
The idea being the beast still a better chance of getting in and out, and that the hornets are less likely to catch them. They don't work particularly well. They don't really have a huge effect.
The other thing is, is one of the things that this, AP has not done is to put a skirt around the, the, . The the hive stand here, because the hornets can hide in underneath the stand, and in fact you can attack the bees coming back in again. This was the first nest found in Tepri in the south of England in 2016.
If you look at this particular, you wonder, well, where is it? And it is actually at the very top of the tree. There, very difficult to see, speaking to one of the, bee inspectors who was out on in this garden where this tree was, and she said that they eventually saw it, but she said if you move a few feet to either side, the nest disappeared, very difficult to see.
This was really a smashing of the nests that were found in Britain and were dealt with between 2016 and 2022. And in fact there were these incursions that were there, but they were thought that they were all dealt with. Now, unfortunately, we go to 2023 and it shoots up to 72 nests in 56 locations.
It was the same in France. There was a massive increase in the population of Asian hornets, and, and it was a bumper year for, for hornets. And unfortunately, as a result, we got 72 nests right across into the UK.
Now it settled down the next year in as much as it dropped down to 23 nests in 2024. Much, much less, but at the same time it's thought is that at that stage that they become established in the south of England. This is to give you some idea of what they're dealing with in France.
This particular gentleman is up on, killing a nest in a tree, and that that's the type of suit he has to have on. He has to have a mask to make sure he doesn't get the venoms spat on him. But also you can see, they, you go near a nest and they really will defend their nest very vigorously.
So what should beekeepers do for come and say to Britain's coming our way? Well, one thing we've really got to find out to identify there's certain here, and the whole idea is an awful lot of people have very little idea of what a a bee or the difference between a bee, a wasp, or a hornet. And there are also several other big insects within Britain that can resemble it, such as a wood wasp.
So we've got to take his time. So one of the things about it is if you suspect a nest, do not go near it. You will regret it.
You can certainly set up monitoring traps or beekeepers can do this, but if you see what you suspect is, is an Asian hornet, you want to try and take a photograph. And the easier way to do that might be to try and knock it down and catch it in the net or put it in the freezer to kill it, and then take a photograph, very important. And in doubt there there are again we'll come to this, but certainly just get an idea to show the type of suit that you have to hold to to deal with these insects.
Anyway, there are various ways in which you can report it. There's the Asian Hornet Watch app. It's an app really whereas it's on if you take a photograph of it, it will in fact send it through to some of these organisations, and they will then try and identify if that is in fact is an Asian hornet or not.
Also, I mean, there's, you're recording it, say, on the NNSS stands for non-native Species Secretariat. They have a website that's for all sorts of for invasive species. More information could be a thing called Beebase, which is the website of the National Bee Unit, which is based in New York.
They have Asian hornet pages, they have ID guides, and various ways of making traps for Asian hornet. So there's things to do. This is the type of poster that we have that can be distributed to the public, to show the difference.
So you can see, in fact, there's an abdomen here between an Asian hornet, Vespa Vlatina and Vespa crabro, the European hornet. Now I just go to a little area in the northern Spain. This is Galicia.
It's a province of northern Spain. And in 2012, they found two Asian hornet nests, two. Right by 10 years later, they found and destroyed 28,000 nests.
So you've got to think of the logistics of that. You, you've got to find them and indeed, you've got to deal with them. And I do remember seeing a photograph showing a primary school and along the edges of the roof, there were along one wall of the school there were 5 Asian hornet nests.
So really quite a problem, but you think of the logistics of getting together teams of pest control teams. The equipment they need, cherry pickers and all the rest of it, and wanting to get them and very often you want to try and maybe get them in the evening when a lot of the actual hornets are back in the nest, the cost of it. So this is not just a problem for beekeepers, this is a problem for society and not just beekeepers.
The sting of an Asian hornet is much more likely. To produce an allergic reaction than say a honey bee sting. So there's a public health, problem here, and, it's something that, governments are going to and councils, everybody are going to take account of.
I'll move on just to this, right? This is a video. So that work.
This is a beekeeper in Brittany in France, and this is one of his aies. Now the bees are hovering around, those are Asian hornets are hawking outside these, these hives. And you can see that the bees are busy trying to defend themselves at the entrance of the hives.
Quite incredible. This is 2023. Let's see, and this in fact is that same a prey, and you can see just the enormous problem of the Asian hornets are just trying to cried into these nets.
Now there's the honey bees, these nests just do not have a chance. Of trying to get in and out to try and bring food and fodder into their. So these colonies are doomed.
And that is the problem. That's just again, 2023, it was a very bad year, certainly, but it shows the enormity of the problem. The other thing about it is, is Asia these Asian hornets, when they get in towards the autumn time, they will then attack grape harvests, and they will go in because it's a source of carbohydrate.
And, and, and really. Say a single bite into one grape will destroy a grape. It will get a fungus in it and that's the end of it.
So I mean, it is a major implications for the wine industry in France and in Europe generally. Again, I talked about earlier about these muzzles they put in front of the highs, you could see really with those previous videos, just maybe these are just not as effective as they should be. The, the, the I just try and give the bees a better chance to escape, but unfortunately, I think it'll be of a minor help to them.
So, and it's really little or no evidence that they help. This is a thing called the electric harp, and it's a bit it's a zapper really, and the idea is you set it up, you can set it up to create electrical electrical charges to kill the Asian horns, they fly into it. The bees actually, the, the wires are set so the bees can fly through without being harmed at all, and they usually do learn how to avoid it.
But again, it has that these are certainly more effective than some use, but again, very expensive to buy, very expensive to maintain, and there is whether they're worth the effort. Right, these are more what people are going for for catches to try and catch them. These, these are well designed traps which will allow a lot of bycatch to get to escape and will still kill hornets and they've got then lures to put into them which will attract hornets.
The The other problem really is, and which everybody sort of agrees that the one time of the year which you really want to try and and catch hornets, in fact, is the springtime. When they're establishing their initial small nest, if you can catch them at that stage, a lot of teams in France go out in the springtime to do this, to try and catch them in that early stage that they can be destroyed before they can make a full big nest. It's when you're getting into try and catch it at this stage, you do have to catch an awful lot of hornets before you're going to make any difference.
The other thing it is worth mentioning is that if your, if your hornets are in fact affecting your apiary, it would tend to mean that the nest is probably within about 500 yards of your apiary. And so that's the sort of area that you'd be looking for. Now, I'm going to deviate here onto a slightly different .
Organism here, and this is the giant Asian hornets, and this has caused a lot of confusion in the media, because this is a monster. Vespa Vettina is bad enough. This is a monster.
Thankfully we don't have this yet, but, there is always potential that it could appear. This is Vespa Mandarinia, the giant Asian hornet, and it is huge. And it is commonly known as the as the killer, the killer hornets or the murder hornet.
And this is how it attacks honeybees. You can see the difference in size, and it just chops, its mandibles are very powerful and it just chops a honey bee in two. And indeed if we go to this site, go to the top left, there's Vespa Mandarinia attacking a honeybee colony.
And the one on the right is Vespa mandarin no, sorry, Vespa Valentina, the Asian, the, the smaller Asian hornet that's affecting its hawking outside a hive. And yet you can see the effect of of vespa bandarria on this colony. You can just see all the dead bees.
And you know, a colony of maybe or a small number, say, of hornets, say 10 or a dozen could decimate a full colony of honey bees of 50,000 strong in maybe half an hour, an hour, very destructive. Vespa banterida has a very powerful sting. And this is the effect of a sting, and the amount of venom that it injects into what it stings is about 10 to 15 times more than a honey bee sting.
The effect of that is there's so much venom that it causes local necrosis around the sting area, which causes the tissue to snuff. So you get these bullet hole looking lesions on on your on your body, and that's the effect of it. And if you get enough of these, you'll get so much venom in your system, it will shut down your liver, your kidneys, and you die.
This man is probably quite lucky to survive. And this is the, again, the after effects of healing up of these stings. Anyway, it's been 42 people killed in China in 2013 and probably more since, 1600 left for these bullet wounds, bullet-like wounds, so.
This is what happens now, Vespa mandarinia is a ground dwelling hornet, and I'd often thought, say, oh well, it'll probably stay. It is found in Japan and in the China and the Far East. However, I thought, oh well, it's grounds, it's ground dwelling, it'll it'll stay there.
Unfortunately, in 2019, it was found in Vancouver Island in Canada. And in fact, within a very short space of time, it had actually crossed the border into Washington state in the USA before Donald Trump could build a wall, and in fact it's there now they, they. Departments of agriculture both in Canada and in the US have gone to great lengths to try and eradicate it, and they stated about some months ago that they had done so, is that they had been eradicated.
I think that remains to be seen how they've been successful. Vancouver Island is a beautiful island. I've been there and it's very wooded, it's an ideal habitat for vespa Mandarinia.
Anyway, the British Bee Veterinary Association was formed in the 1st of April 2015, so we've just had our 10th anniversary. We're there to raise level on educational bees in the profession, and we're all evidence-based bee science. We look at every type of bee, not just honey bees, but bumblebees, solitary bees, etc.
And we have full members and associate members and students are free. So I'd like to thank these people here, there's Professor Steve Martin from the University of Salford, Megan Seymour, Nigel Simmons, and Tom Williamson. And there's a couple of books I would recommend on this particular subject.
So, thank you very much indeed for your time and and certainly if you wish to send through any questions, we can probably do it by email, I can probably try and answer any questions for you by that same method. Thank you.
