According to the information available on
Asiatic Hornet life-cycles - plus a large dose of observation over the past several years - over-wintered AH queens have been out on the wing looking for carbohydrate-heavy forage since the end of February.
Now this knowledge gives us a tough choice...
We try not to kill any creatures and to let nature sort out the balance between the various species who share our home with us. But... we know that each queen can go on to build nests that will house thousands of adult hornets, each capable of eating up to 50 honeybees per day during the summer. So any queens we can stop during the Spring could mean saving entire colonies later in the year.
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| Trapped Asiatic Hornet queens from the garden |
Whilst our choice won't be for everyone, we have decided to trap queens now and have weighed this up as the lesser of several evils (certainly not a choice we wanted to make). Consequently, we have been experimenting with various types of traps and, more importantly it would seem, the lures/bait to go inside them. There are many, many types of trap available and a quick Google search will reveal lots of
interesting and entrepreneurial ideas from beekeeping suppliers and beekeepers alike from all over Europe.
Some are very simple -
make a trap out of a fizzy drink bottle, for example. And some are ingenious but in our view, to be truly successful at protecting honeybees,
