Asian Hornet APP

[rdartington]

And that's what the hard of thinking really struggle to grasp - whether it's fipronil or kill traps

This post and those above all seem negative about dealing with hornets once they reach the hawking stage - but the extensive study identified before was not. The study did not mention use of custard so lets clarify what we might do in UK.
Spring: hang traps to catch foundress queens if lucky, and at least random workers that indicate a nest is nearby that NBU could track and destroy. Nbu can only have finite number of inspectors and may at some time be overwhelmed by the number of calls and not arrive, in which case beekeepers might at least put an attractant on trays, covered with chicken-wire mesh to exclude birds and rats, and somehow find time to sit and watch for hornets to arrive, when they can be dabbed with fipronil custard if that has been authorised and made available safely.
Presumably the FC is rubbed off by close contact in the nest in the way OA solution is shared around bees, not activly cleaned off. Whether any is rubbed off onto the queen would be up to luck. If Qis killed, can AH rear another Q from an egg, as bees do? Ie is difference between Q and worker due to feeding, as in bees, or inherent in the egg?
The attractant would need to be something that would induce the hornets to return immediately to the nest, so not just a sweet drink. Wasps cut off the head and abdomen of bees and feed just the thorax to wasp larvae - that respond by feeding the adult wasp with a sweet solution. Do hornets do the same? If so, attractant could be bits of dried meat thorax sized - or even dried insect thoraxes. Huge new market here for bee suppliers!

Summer: AH are now attracted to bee hives, not bait, and hawk outside hive until bees cringe and stay inside. Hive entrances need to be reduced to 5mm so AH cant actually enter. Hives can be closed entirely and AH attracted to bait seeped in insecticide. Bait will be fed to larvae, so insecticide will not have to be as dangerous as fipronil for a ‘brood break’ to be acheived. But what is Q naturally fed? Do we know? She must get some form of protein as eggs cant be made from only sugar. Do Q attendants masticate incoming insect food into some special form to feed the Q? If so, then some poisoned food might be fed to the Q. Wishful thinking?
The brood break will mean no more workers emerge when all existing pupae have emerged - how long is that? Bee foragers last only 2 to 4 weeks - how long do AH flyers live? What therefore is the time period from feeding hawkers with bait to the end of hawking? Might be well into autumn? How much quicker if hawkers pick up bait seeped with a contact poison, that kills them after they have fed larvae? Ie , back to mild treatment with FC?

Please enjoy pointing out my inaccuracies. I must be word perfect for an association meeting on 15 March to prepare for action.

 

[Erichalfbee]

I must be word perfect for an association meeting on 15 March to prepare for action.

Well isn’t the responsible thing to do is to echo the NBU’s position rather than make your own up and look here to proof read?

 

[roche]

Well isn’t the responsible thing to do is to echo the NBU’s position rather than make your own up and look here to proof read?

And further iterate how counter productive trapping may be.
Also explain the difference between bait stations and traps.

 

[Amaranth]

R Dartington - It is encouraging that you are using good background knowledge to speculate, not just wild speculation. Having said that, please don’t use this in any talk to your branch. You would be misleading people with possibly severe implications later.
Very soon the well researched second edition of the Asian Hornet handbook will be being published, hopefully within a a couple of weeks if not days. The author is an entomologist beekeeper, Dr Sarah Bunker. That will contain the answers to many of your good questions. In the meantime, you can read about an alternative to using FC in the event of the NBU being overwhelmed and unable to track a nest in your area. That would be to get together with a couple of fellow beekeepers (or others) and do your own tracking. The method for this is described clearly on the BBKA website. (The fact that it is published by the BBKA does not automatically mean it isn’t valid, contrary to popular assertions.) it is the second item under AH presentations and resources. This is the method used to good effect by volunteers on Jersey. (The volunteers have a Facebook page called Jersey Asian Hornet Group if you’d like to know more about them.) Once the spadework has been done to track down a nest to within a small area, it would be much easier for a small team of NBU staff to do the final locating and get it dealt with by one of their pest controllers.

 

[rdartington]

This post and those above all seem negative about dealing with hornets once they reach the hawking stage - but the extensive study identified before was not. The study did not mention use of custard so lets clarify what we might do in UK.
Spring: hang traps to catch foundress queens if lucky, and at least random workers that indicate a nest is nearby that NBU could track and destroy. Nbu can only have finite number of inspectors and may at some time be overwhelmed by the number of calls and not arrive, in which case beekeepers might at least put an attractant on trays, covered with chicken-wire mesh to exclude birds and rats, and somehow find time to sit and watch for hornets to arrive, when they can be dabbed with fipronil custard if that has been authorised and made available safely.
Presumably the FC is rubbed off by close contact in the nest in the way OA solution is shared around bees, not activly cleaned off. Whether any is rubbed off onto the queen would be up to luck. If Qis killed, can AH rear another Q from an egg, as bees do? Ie is difference between Q and worker due to feeding, as in bees, or inherent in the egg?
The attractant would need to be something that would induce the hornets to return immediately to the nest, so not just a sweet drink. Wasps cut off the head and abdomen of bees and feed just the thorax to wasp larvae - that respond by feeding the adult wasp with a sweet solution. Do hornets do the same? If so, attractant could be bits of dried meat thorax sized - or even dried insect thoraxes. Huge new market here for bee suppliers!

Summer: AH are now attracted to bee hives, not bait, and hawk outside hive until bees cringe and stay inside. Hive entrances need to be reduced to 5mm so AH cant actually enter. Hives can be closed entirely and AH attracted to bait seeped in insecticide. Bait will be fed to larvae, so insecticide will not have to be as dangerous as fipronil for a ‘brood break’ to be acheived. But what is Q naturally fed? Do we know? She must get some form of protein as eggs cant be made from only sugar. Do Q attendants masticate incoming insect food into some special form to feed the Q? If so, then some poisoned food might be fed to the Q. Wishful thinking?
The brood break will mean no more workers emerge when all existing pupae have emerged - how long is that? Bee foragers last only 2 to 4 weeks - how long do AH flyers live? What therefore is the time period from feeding hawkers with bait to the end of hawking? Might be well into autumn? How much quicker if hawkers pick up bait seeped with a contact poison, that kills them after they have fed larvae? Ie , back to mild treatment with FC?

Please enjoy pointing out my inaccuracies. I must be word perfect for an association meeting on 15 March to prepare for action.

Correction: when putting out bait, it should have a cover that lets AH in and out but not European hornets.

Well isn’t the responsible thing to do is to echo the NBU’s position rather than make your own up and look here to proof read?

Well, yes. Have just searched nationalbeeunit.com. Says ‘low risk of overwintered Q’s in Kent, East Sussex, Devon, North Yorkshire which will be monitored with traps. If credible sightings or captures occur elsewhere , advice will be updated. ‘. This seems very laid back. Just one undiscovered nest further north could lead to up to hundreds of nests the following year. Alan Baxter lived in France for 23 years - his 3-page article In BeeCraft is all about dealing with hornets in your area, saying ‘it does not have to be the end of beekeeping, but it might be the end of beekeeping as we currently know it’.
Should I just tell the 15 members at our meeting. ‘ Don't worry, no need to do anything, we are not in the low risk area identified by NBU’?

 

[user 819]

Out of hibernation the queen initially will be looking for carbs and sweet feeding so the wick bait stations if monitored will be first base.
Get them to monitor these type of stations, as it has been said once /if a Q finds an a easy sweet meal she is likely to return regularly in the early days to get her carb fixes so one could expect a visit every 20 or 30 mins. Minimising non teargt specie by catch will ensure e ecome possible food in the chain not only for AH , VC and birds etc,etc.

From what I read in the BBKA comic and the LBKA newsletter trapping is a word used a lot so looks like non target species will suffer.

I'm in the North Weald corridor area and know of two nests found as the crow flies approx. within 25- 30 miles, tbh not anticipating seeing anything this spring but will be monitoring as best as I can to be a little prepared.

 

[Amaranth]

The NBU approach is to trap within 3 miles of a suspected (last year) nest that reached maturity and would have released new queens. The rationale is that hibernation takes place very close to the nest. On emergence the new queen feeds up rapidly before setting off on her journey of tens of miles to set up a new nest. Once she settles in a new location and starts nest building, she will be out foraging for AT LEAST TWO MONTHS. That is plenty of time for us to use open monitoring stations and repeatedly watch them for several minutes at a time, when convenient, knowing that a queen is likely to be visiting repeatedly at that stage, if there is one in the area. Work was done in Majorca to study the effect of Spring trapping, where they eradicated Asian hornets. They trapped as above, within 3 miles of known nests, and 1,500 traps over four springs caught only 25 queens. Bearing in mind that even “selective” traps still have significant by catch (often queens of their own kind, in spring), trapping further afield than the 3 miles cannot be justified. Even the better “selective” traps do still kill other insects, although the commercially made ones are at least better than the bottle traps.

 

[Amaranth]

I can’t vouch for other BBKA articles, but I can truthfully vouch for the tracking guide as mentioned above, under AH resources. It is doable by volunteers, in the event of NBU being overwhelmed elsewhere, though of course we’d still need the services of an appropriate pest controller.

 

[warsaw_hive]

The NBU approach is to trap within 3 miles of a suspected (last year) nest that reached maturity and would have released new queens. The rationale is that hibernation takes place very close to the nest. On emergence the new queen feeds up rapidly before setting off on her journey of tens of miles to set up a new nest. Once she settles in a new location and starts nest building, she will be out foraging for AT LEAST TWO MONTHS. That is plenty of time for us to use open monitoring stations and repeatedly watch them for several minutes at a time, when convenient, knowing that a queen is likely to be visiting repeatedly at that stage, if there is one in the area. Work was done in Majorca to study the effect of Spring trapping, where they eradicated Asian hornets. They trapped as above, within 3 miles of known nests, and 1,500 traps over four springs caught only 25 queens. Bearing in mind that even “selective” traps still have significant by catch (often queens of their own kind, in spring), trapping further afield than the 3 miles cannot be justified. Even the better “selective” traps do still kill other insects, although the commercially made ones are at least better than the bottle traps.

This is an excellent summary by Amaranth.

If anybody hasn't yet watched the video below then I recommend they do so. There are several speakers, hence the long length. I've already made this comment on the BBKA forum, but I would like to thank again the Dover beekeepers for the incredible work they've been putting in without any recognition.

p.s. link should automagically skip the boring first ten minutes

 

[Amaranth]

R Dartington: there is plenty your members can be doing now. No need for them to be complacent. Most importantly, they can be signing up as verifiers for the NBU. For convenience, NBU will be contacting BBKA AHAT coordinators when they have a report of a possible AH sighting. (Perhaps non BBKA members can negotiate separately with them to offer this essential service - not sure) A coordinator can easily recruit an appropriately spaced out group of verifiers by using the Members Map at the bottom of the page of branch/ association members on the eR2 spreadsheet. Your beekeepers are shown as yellow dots, and your verifiers as red dots. That makes it easy: simply click on any yellow dots that are a long way from a red dot. Email those beekeepers and ask them to agree that they would put out a bait and check it later if asked to do so to confirm a sighting. Then send them some guidelines and make sure they know about using the Asian Hornet Watch app etc. You’ll need to supply them with some bait - your association should have a supply. All this takes time and is best done now, not when you can’t keep up with hurrying about checking all the sightings yourself in the height of the season. The more publicity AH gets, the more false alarms we will have to be checking out - but we can’t afford not to check, and you can’t do it all yourself.

They can also be collecting jars and making bait stations. These work best with some tubing mounted in the lid, as a conduit for the lid. (Electrical trunking pipe or waste water pipe, 20mm in diameter, are both good.) Colin’s tutorial on AHAT.org.uk is a little out of date (he now uses a conical step drill bit) but the pipe mounting is the same. They can also be handing out leaflets to friends and publicising AH in other ways. The NBU post card sized leaflet is particularly clear and appeals to the public with its good photo and handy comparison with bees and wasps for size. Perhaps one of your members could send for some to share out.

 

[Karol]

This post and those above all seem negative about dealing with hornets once they reach the hawking stage - but the extensive study identified before was not. The study did not mention use of custard so lets clarify what we might do in UK.

What's the point of providing further clarification when you ignore sound advice from people who have successfully helped eradicate velutina in the field?

Spring: hang traps to catch foundress queens if lucky, and at least random workers that indicate a nest is nearby that NBU could track and destroy.

What is it that prevents you from understanding that spring trapping is counter productive and will only serve to help velutina become established? Stick to bait stations. DO NOT USE TRAPS!

Nbu can only have finite number of inspectors and may at some time be overwhelmed by the number of calls and not arrive, in which case beekeepers might at least put an attractant on trays, covered with chicken-wire mesh to exclude birds and rats, and somehow find time to sit and watch for hornets to arrive,

They do not have to find lots of time to monitor for velutina. The average interval between feeding visits will be of the order of 18-20 minutes. One hour every few days is more than ample monitoring time to detect velutina provided that secure wick bait stations are used that are prevented from drying out.

when they can be dabbed with fipronil custard if that has been authorised and made available safely.

If velutina shows itself, call the NBU AND ASK THEM WHAT THEY WOULD LIKE YOU TO DO! If they are overwhelmed it will be the easiest thing to change the bait station for a trap. Velutina in keeping with all other wasps have remarkable navigational memory and will return to within millimetres of a discovered food source. This means you can swap in a trap for the bait station at any time to kill visiting velutina. This vastly reduces the risk of killing beneficial indigenous vespines which otherwise compete with velutina.

Presumably the FC is rubbed off by close contact in the nest in the way OA solution is shared around bees, not activly cleaned off.

No, it is preened off when the vector returns to the nest. FC is formulated as a carbohydrate protein mix which is highly attractive to velutina. The reason it is painted on the back of the thorax is precisely to stop the vector eating the toxin itself. The vector becomes the trojan that introduces the toxin to its nest mates. In the juvenile nest one of the nest mates is highly likely to be the queen. I reiterate that Mazzamazda had incredible success with FC. Nevertheless it is not warranted in the UK because the UK does not presently have an established infestation.

Whether any is rubbed off onto the queen would be up to luck.

Rubbish. This just shows ignorance of wasp behaviour.

If Qis killed, can AH rear another Q from an egg, as bees do? Ie is difference between Q and worker due to feeding, as in bees, or inherent in the egg?

Not mated so will not be able to produce female workers and colony will collapse. In wasps where a queen dies there's an 11% chance (if memory serves me right) that a queen will be replaced by an emerging daughter but she will not have mated so the colony collapses. In the absence of a replacement queen, female workers will lay eggs but these will only produce drones so again the colony collapses.

The attractant would need to be something that would induce the hornets to return immediately to the nest, so not just a sweet drink. Wasps cut off the head and abdomen of bees and feed just the thorax to wasp larvae - that respond by feeding the adult wasp with a sweet solution. Do hornets do the same? If so, attractant could be bits of dried meat thorax sized - or even dried insect thoraxes. Huge new market here for bee suppliers!

Back to laced protein again! Irresponsible and reprehensible for all the reasons previously cited.

Summer: AH are now attracted to bee hives, not bait, and hawk outside hive until bees cringe and stay inside. Hive entrances need to be reduced to 5mm so AH cant actually enter. Hives can be closed entirely and AH attracted to bait seeped in insecticide. Bait will be fed to larvae, so insecticide will not have to be as dangerous as fipronil for a ‘brood break’ to be acheived. But what is Q naturally fed? Do we know? She must get some form of protein as eggs cant be made from only sugar. Do Q attendants masticate incoming insect food into some special form to feed the Q? If so, then some poisoned food might be fed to the Q. Wishful thinking?

You clearly don't understand how FC works and confuse it with laced protein bait. Best advice would be for you to refrain from presenting anything on use of pesticides to your local association as neither option is justified in the UK and you are certainly not qualified as an advocate to recommend something contrary to the advice of the NBU.

The brood break will mean no more workers emerge when all existing pupae have emerged - how long is that? Bee foragers last only 2 to 4 weeks - how long do AH flyers live? What therefore is the time period from feeding hawkers with bait to the end of hawking? Might be well into autumn? How much quicker if hawkers pick up bait seeped with a contact poison, that kills them after they have fed larvae? Ie , back to mild treatment with FC?

Please enjoy pointing out my inaccuracies. I must be word perfect for an association meeting on 15 March to prepare for action.

Just stick to the advice provided by the NBU. At least you won't do more harm than good which is where you are headed presently.

 

[polomadh]

In response to the “what should I tell my 15 members to be doing at the next meeting” and what should hobby BK’s be doing in areas where there are no AH teams on the ground already
- organise your members to establish a network of monitoring stations to do a brief time limited coordinated monitoring event to check you don’t have any AH currently, and repeat as we get into the Autumn
- get your members to sign up to be BBKA AH verifiers
- get your members to distribute the NNSS hornet posters to local community groups that could help
- get your members to write to, meet and generally pester their MP to allocate funding for NBU/DEFRA (could mention honey fraud at the same time)
- have a contingency plan to temporarily relocate their hives should they have problems with AH
- donate cash to the BBKA AH fighting fund
- stop talking about FC for now
- read and digest the whole of this discussion thread which has educated lots of us (shout out to Karol here)

The NBU did a good job last year, they are balancing many competing issues through multiple government agencies. It feels like we are working out the best response to AH. Yes there were issues with communications in 2023 but things are not always so black and white.
Working with the BBKA associations and branches across the uk we have the potential to overcome AH in what will be a long term year on year issue not just for BK’s for the whole ecology of the UK

 

[Karol]

Snip...

Working with the BBKA associations and branches across the uk we have the potential to overcome AH in what will be a long term year on year issue not just for BK’s for the whole ecology of the UK

I think you are absolutely correct that this will be year on year. The reason being that there will continue to be a residual reservoir population of velutina in mainland Europe for as long as nefarious actors make significant profits from traps, baits, harps, etc, etc which all rely on a healthy sustained velutina population.

 

[Murox]

I think you are absolutely correct that this will be year on year. The reason being that there will continue to be a residual reservoir population of velutina in mainland Europe for as long as nefarious actors make significant profits from traps, baits, harps, etc, etc which all rely on a healthy sustained velutina population.

Thats a sadly cynical view, though I fear it is a realistic one.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

can see it happening over here already, certain players spreading fear and panic, basically being economical with the truth on facebook - then advrtising kit at mad prices.

 

[Karol]

Thats a sadly cynical view, though I fear it is a realistic one.

There's little or no money to be made from eradication and time and again I've encountered vested interests plugging 'management' solutions in respect of velutina. Given that velutina is a human introduced invasive species there's no logical rationale to oppose an eradication method which if deployed in a co-ordinated ubiquitous fashion would absolutely remove velutina unless of course it means the loss of revenue from traps, baits, harps etc etc.

Where I hold out some hope in mainland Europe is that other agricultural actors such as crop growers who are also adversely affected by velutina may pick up the mantle and run with FC. Only time will tell.

 

[Murox]

If consumer pockets are affected, voters will grumble and politicians will tremble.

Yes they might tremble, but that doesn't equate into positive action for the good of all.

 

[Murox]

Don't disagree but I suspect crop growers will take matters into their own hands long before then. Vineyards in France carry a reasonable amount of political clout.

Yes the people of France deal effectively with intransigent governance in their own special way.

 

[Skinfaxi]

Could always dump whole hornet nests to stir things up..

 

[rdartington]

What's the point of providing further clarification when you ignore sound advice from people who have successfully helped eradicate velutina in the past?

Because the NBU approach has NOT eliminated velutina. 20+ nests eliminated in 2022, 72 nests in following year 2023, ie 3 times as many.

Andrew Durham’ three ‘Special Briefings’ on hornets in France are available on utube. AH arrived as one Q in 2004. Has now covered all France and is invading Germany, Spain and Belgium.
One of Andrews slides records growth of hornet nests culled in one department (equal to a UK county) in north west. 2011, just 4. Next year 63. Then 235, 1,150, 3,500 to 5,000in 2016. Action stepped up in 2017 - 68,000 Q caught, nests reduced to 3,089. Reduced to only 2,064 in 2021 but back to 5,031 in 2022.
UK progress from 20+ to 72 last year may mean nil this year is all nest ere found - or 3 times again, ie 200, on route to thousands. We will have to wait and see.

Andrew’s Briefings are fascinating. In France, the majority of found nests are in towns - but maybe because rural areas are litlle populated. Hornets like the wamth in towns - and nest low down. If approached within 5 m , they will attack - advice is to cover your face with your hands and run. But obviouly, part your fingers to see where you are going. Stings to the eyes do not cause permanent blindness. Great stuff! Two nests last year were within London. If one further nest was undiscovered , how many nests this year? Anyone gets seriously stung, the papers will report . Then the public will wake up.

I am not critical of what NBU are doing but they are clearly civil servants following a safety first routine, not striving to succeed in a competitive open market. They get paid whatever. Bee suppliers are marketeers, and so are seising the opportunity to present badly designed expensive rubbish to innocent untrained beekeepers. Badly designed traps cost £7 or £20 - a drinks bottle can be converted to a better trap once you have drunk the fruit juice inside. One plastic box fitted with two funnel entrances is being sold by Thorne’s for £80 - a wooden one could be made at home for under £3.

This whole process of tracking down a nest and then injecting insecticide is very labour intensive and so expensive and requires specialised training not available to beekeepers countrywide. To me the obvious way to get insecticide inside is to get hornets to carry it there - they know where the nest is, we do not need to know. There are risks to be identified and the procedure improved, yes. We need to know how hornets feed their grubs, starting from eggs. Do we know?- noone has spoken up. We only learned about bees when Huber designed a leaf observation hive and put his servant to watch it. Has anyone made a hornet observation nest? If not, why not?

I will not reply to the rest of your objections. Negativity is not a way forward. Nor is feedings Q’s with carbohydrate in bait stations, rather than trapping. Happy well fed Q’s will make lovely big nests early on. In FRance, 64% agree with trapping - reduces nests by 50%.