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  • Asian Hornet - Do you know where your monitoring traps are???

  • Honeybee pests and diseases.
Honeybee pests and diseases.
 #5503  by AndrewLD
 16 Jan 2020, 09:31
The sight of my empty monitoring traps stacked forlornly in the corner of the garden prompts me to alert everyone to the fact that any over-wintering asian hornet queens can be emerging as early as mid-February (or as soon as the temperature gets to 10-12 degC for 5-6 days). So along with spring preparations in the apiary it will soon be time to clean them out and put apple juice on the shopping list; that is pressed apple juice (NOT from concentrate).
If you were wondering what happened last year (2019), so were the French :? Nest numbers were generally down along the western side from Brittany to the North of France by 50%; and that is being attributed to the two heatwaves last summer. In this country, record February temperatures were followed by the Beast from the East and a generally damp cool spring, which will have drawn them out of hibernation only to fail at the "first-nest" stage.
Let's see what happens this year