03/06/2020
Cheeky Blighters!
Last week we
moved a couple of hives to a new location elsewhere in our meadow. The colonies
in these hives have grown quickly this Spring and all of a sudden there were
far too many bees flying close to the house for my comfort.
Pegging washing out
on the line was getting to be a nerve-wracking activity unless I was wearing my
bee-suit. Not exactly a comfortable way to live! The move went well enough, but
when we lifted the concrete blocks that had served as hive stands, we
discovered something we weren’t expecting to see – an Asian Hornet’s nest! Only
a small primary one, and it was empty, but of all the cheek, setting up home
UNDER one of our bee hives! We’re now on the look-out for the main secondary
nest as, if the queen survived and raised several workers, it won’t be far
away. Wish us luck in our search…
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Hope you find them and dispose of them. Some Asian hornets flying around our house but not near our hive yet.
ReplyDeleteAlways tough to strike that balance between not wanting to kill any of nature's creatures and wanting to look after our bees! Hope your hornets don't become a problem for you this summer :-)
DeleteA couple of summers ago we couldn't go into the garden because of the Asian hornets eating all the grapes and other fruit. It was a very scary experience. Last spring I put traps out using a plastic bottle with the top cut off and trued around to make a funnel, half filled with beer, cassis and cider vinegar to deter the bees. I caught 32 new young queens as they came out of hibernation. I understand that each nest has about 1000 hornets in. In the early autumn I put more traps out in the orchard and caught an unbelievable amount of hornets getting ready to mate with the young queens. This spring I put traps out again and caught 3. So far we don't have hornets in the garden and it is full of bees and other insects.
ReplyDeleteHornets just started to appear around our hives this last week so traps going out now (unfortunately as we don't want to kill anything but fell we do need to protect our honey bees). Good luck :-)
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