Asian Hornet

[MickBBKA]

We have been told that our local nest had not produced any queens. I take no comfort in that as I presume that queen came from some nest that did which can't be too far away and she won't be the only one.
Good point by Nigel, but moving large apiaries is going to be a nightmare and as the NBU maintains a mushroom policy then you could be moving apiaries out of the frying pan !

[MickBBKA]

So I read in last months BBKA mag that there has been a huge reduction in foul brood inspections by the NBU to allow inspectors to deploy to AH incursions. Now I have been very critical about the Government and the NBU's Dads army approach to AH and I do believe I have been proven to be 100% correct so far. So my question is, were the NBU doing more FB inspections than was necessary so enabling them to reduce visits, or have the Government and NBU not resourced enough into AH incursions so that they have to pull money and people in to make up the shortfall ? I mean if they are not taking this threat seriously then what possibly could go wrong ??? Why are they using bee inspectors for AH sightings, surely that's the remit of the APHA ? The half baked AH plan has failed massively as I said it would, now they are going to open the door to outbreaks of FB. Bees lead by donkeys springs to mind. This whole organisation is not fit for purpose and should be replaced. The Government only consider beekeeping a hobby and not livestock management without any thought of the environmental concerns about the loss of bee colonies. The BBKA have been very silent about this shambles.

[AdamD]

My own seasonal inspector spent some time in Kent last autumn, dealing with Asian Hornets. He did continue the inspections at my apiary as I am a sentinel apiary being close to a port.

The south coast had it particularly hard with regard to hornets - could the 'authorities' have a list of beekeepers who could be trained over winter and then called upon to assist to help out the existing personnel in the future, who were overwhelmed last year?