BBKA Forum

British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Asian Hornet - Latest French Dept Report for 2019

  • Honeybee pests and diseases.
Honeybee pests and diseases.
 #6344  by AndrewLD
 11 Apr 2020, 20:44
The latest French departement to report on the 2019 Asian Hornet situation is Morbihan (Brittany). It's a report i await each year with eager anticipation because Morbihan has been at the forefront of the collective fight since 2015. The figures for 2019 show a drop of reported nest numbers back to 2015 levels reflecting the impact of late spring frosts on the hornets' first nests (nid primaire) and the June/July heatwaves on main (secondary) nests. Combined with a very active nest destruction campaign and Spring trapping this reduction of 30% on last year shows the effectiveness of an integrated approach to the pest.
Of particular note however is that 67% of nests were found below 5 metres and only 29% were found in trees and shrubs. The overall picture is that the hornet is fast evolving to become an urban pest that is looking for more sheltered locations closer to the ground and all of this means it is coming more and more into contact with humans.
As the tendency of the French government has been to pass the Asian Hornet off as a problem for beekeepers, who alone cannot mount and fund nest destruction campaigns on the scale required, this increasing proximity to the general population will cause a demand for public-funded campaigns to continue - so there is a silver lining to the cloud.
 #6356  by MickBBKA
 12 Apr 2020, 03:29
Well, the UK has failed to stop just about every invasive pest ever to reach our shores so its only a matter of time before it is resident here. IMHO work should be aimed at management rather than prevention because our government will never prevent it taking hold here, as the current circumstances prove. They can't stop boats and planes landing with migrants so have no way of stopping insects. the powers that be should really be putting all their efforts into how we manage once the Hornets become established, not wasting resources on prevention. Grey squirrel, collard dove, harlequin ladybird, slipper limpet, Chinese mitten crabs, signal crayfish, Himalayan balsam, giant hogweed, Japanese Knotweed. Etc...…………………...

Cheers, Mick.
 #6358  by AndrewLD
 12 Apr 2020, 08:01
Although I agree with much of what you say, we need to buy time and we will probably never know how much time the government's current destruction effort has bought us and how much is just down to luck with the weather at key times in the hornet's year. So although I personally don't think the current strategy will work, it's worth a try.
An integrated management plan is available and we can adopt what many French departements and beekeepers have done, building on a solid foundation of experience. However, I doubt that there is yet the appetite for it nor even the ability on the part of the BBKA to push this forward. Furthermore it depends for its success on the involvement and backing of the public. That we may get by default because Asian hornets are not good neighbours to have hiding in your hedges and sheds, roofspaces etc.
There are proven counter-measures that the beekeeper can employ but in the absence of the wider area measures, they will require a lot of investment by beekeepers in not just money but time and effort.
In the short term my aim is to ensure that beekeepers know that there is something that they can do so that on first contact with the hornet they don't do nothing, lose their bees and give up beekeeping in despair.
 #6359  by Chrisbarlow
 12 Apr 2020, 08:22
AndrewLD wrote:
12 Apr 2020, 08:01

In the short term my aim is to ensure that beekeepers know that there is something that they can do so that on first contact with the hornet they don't do nothing, lose their bees and give up beekeeping in despair.
That has to be a worth while endeavor.
I remember a while ago a senior member of the local association mentioning that when varroa arrived in the nineties that many Beekeepers lost their bees to varroa and then never restarted because they had no idea how to deal with varroa
 #6396  by AdamD
 13 Apr 2020, 13:14
I think we are all concerned about the Asian Hornet - and it will only be a matter of time before they become established. However there is one invasive creature that was removed which was the coypu - a large rodent 10x the size of a rat. I remember seeing vans around the Norfolk countryside with COYPU CONTROL on the side. The last one was killed in 1989.