Asian Hornet - Update

[Millet]

What is the human health risks of the NBU trap ?

Unless you make one big enough to fall into what could possibly be a health risk unless you are careless enough to poke your finger in the hole and get stung.

 

[masterBK]

I am one of the NBU sentinels as my apiary is very close to an airport. The entrance hole in trap the NBU sent me several years ago is too small to let in the european hornet but big enough to let in the Asain hornet. There are also exit holes in the upper part of the trap to let out queen and worker wasps so the only species I should find is the Asian hornet. I do get a few moths (and hover flies) entering it but unable to find their way out and only the occasional presumably "not so bright" wasp

 

[charlievictorbravo]

...Where's the evidence that the trap is non-killing?

Well, let's develop this concept further shall we. These sentinel traps are installed next to hives and attract wasps and hornets (but no velutina because there aren't any in the area). The traps preferentially kill crabro hornets but allow wasps to escape. By killing crabro you remove one of the most important insect predators of wasps so you end up with inflated wasp numbers which you've attracted to the vicinity of your hive.

Very clever. You've now increased the risk of your hive being overwhelmed by wasps massively more than any risk from velutina that doesn't exist in the first place - why, because your sentinel trap has just said to every wasp in the area - come get my hives girls - the honey bar's on me!!!!

I'll undermine rubbish advice wherever I see it - for the common good because that's what motivates me.

And I haven't even started on the human health risks of recommending the use of dangerous traps which the NBU design is. There is a public liability risk that the NBU haven't given a second's thought to.

If the sentinel trap is visited once or twice a day, live insects can be carefully released - they do not come in contact with the attractant so do not drown. It's unlikely that they will desiccate due to the hot weather because it's autumn here and it's only going to get colder and wetter. I reiterate - the traps do not appear to be designed to kill VV - merely to trap them for identification. There are places in the UK, as has been confirmed in this thread, that do not have Crabbos - are they over-run by wasps at this time of year as you describe? No, they are not!

As for your actions being for the common good, I think you're being disingenuous. You did not understand that the NBU trap was not a killing trap and have thrown up spurious arguments to cover your misunderstanding. You're so used to dealing with traps that kill that the concept of trapping for identification purposes is alien to you.

My apiary is 4 kilometres from a cross-channel ferry port. There is more likelihood of a VV around here than in Gloucestershire so it's incumbent of beekeepers in those areas of high risk to do what they can to protect other beekeepers' livelihoods and interests. That's why I'm making sentinel traps as advised by the NBU - end of!

If I were to make a criticism of the NBU website and its trap, it's that the instructions to construct and how to use are woeful. I shall be contacting the NBU suggesting that these instructions are improved so that the concept of a sentinel trap is fully explained.

CVB

 

[Gilberdyke John]

If the sentinel trap is visited once or twice a day, live insects can be carefully released - they do not come in contact with the attractant so do not drown. It's unlikely that they will desiccate due to the hot weather because it's autumn here and it's only going to get colder and wetter. I reiterate - the traps do not appear to be designed to kill VV - merely to trap them for identification. There are places in the UK, as has been confirmed in this thread, that do not have Crabbos - are they over-run by wasps at this time of year as you describe? No, they are not!

As for your actions being for the common good, I think you're being disingenuous. You did not understand that the NBU trap was not a killing trap and have thrown up spurious arguments to cover your misunderstanding. You're so used to dealing with traps that kill that the concept of trapping for identification purposes is alien to you.

My apiary is 4 kilometres from a cross-channel ferry port. There is more likelihood of a VV around here than in Gloucestershire so it's incumbent of beekeepers in those areas of high risk to do what they can to protect other beekeepers' livelihoods and interests. That's why I'm making sentinel traps as advised by the NBU - end of!

If I were to make a criticism of the NBU website and its trap, it's that the instructions to construct and how to use are woeful. I shall be contacting the NBU suggesting that these instructions are improved so that the concept of a sentinel trap is fully explained.

CVB

Does anyone know how far from the port of Bristol (or any riverside wharves) the presently identified findings are?

 

[2_dive]

Avonmouth - Tetbury 23mls
Avonmouth - Mendip 12mls
Tetbury - Mendip 32mls

 

[Karol]

I am one of the NBU sentinels as my apiary is very close to an airport. The entrance hole in trap the NBU sent me several years ago is too small to let in the european hornet but big enough to let in the Asain hornet. There are also exit holes in the upper part of the trap to let out queen and worker wasps so the only species I should find is the Asian hornet. I do get a few moths (and hover flies) entering it but unable to find their way out and only the occasional presumably "not so bright" wasp

So as a sentinel trap it will only detect Asian workers as crabro workers and Asian queens are roughly the same size. So the trap doesn't fulfil an early warning function and there's no point setting it in spring???

 

[masterBK]

I imagine its a question of probability. What is the chance of capturing a queen hornet in spring compared with the increased chance of catching the more numerous worker hornets later on? If a worker is caught then hopefully the nest can be tracked down and destroyed before it produces young queens. If a trap is designed to catch asian queens then it likely that european hornet workers will be caught too and we don't want that to happen do we?

 

[Karol]

If the sentinel trap is visited once or twice a day, live insects can be carefully released - they do not come in contact with the attractant so do not drown.

Why not just observe the hive once or twice a day - no need for catching them then.

It's unlikely that they will desiccate due to the hot weather because it's autumn here and it's only going to get colder and wetter.

Which misses the point entirely of a sentinel system. I thought that it was about early detection in which case it would be late spring and at the height of summer that the traps would best serve their intended purpose. As for desiccation and heat exhaustion, if traps are set in the sun on a hot day, heat exhaustion will kill a hornet with a matter of a few minutes. Not that that's the issue here as I still don't understand the need to set up traps if you're going to be visiting once or twice a day to observe your hives?

I reiterate - the traps do not appear to be designed to kill VV - merely to trap them for identification.

More fool the design then. Let the invasive species escape? Sounds like a plan.

There are places in the UK, as has been confirmed in this thread, that do not have Crabbos - are they over-run by wasps at this time of year as you describe? No, they are not!

Quite correct they're not overrun with wasps. But with all due respect you have the argument about face - the crabros aren't there in the first place because there aren't enough wasps on which they feed to sustain them so of course these areas aren't overrun with wasps. The reason why crabros are predominantly found around orchard country is because orchard country sustains larger populations of wasps.

As for your actions being for the common good, I think you're being disingenuous. You did not understand that the NBU trap was not a killing trap and have thrown up spurious arguments to cover your misunderstanding. You're so used to dealing with traps that kill that the concept of trapping for identification purposes is alien to you.

If you say so. I thought I was trying to help protect beehives being overwhelmed by the wasps needlessly attracted by sentinel traps that as far as I can see don't add any value over the plain routine surveillance of hives.

My apiary is 4 kilometres from a cross-channel ferry port. There is more likelihood of a VV around here than in Gloucestershire so it's incumbent of beekeepers in those areas of high risk to do what they can to protect other beekeepers' livelihoods and interests. That's why I'm making sentinel traps as advised by the NBU - end of!

Sorry CVB but this just shows how miss guided the advice is. When there's a verified outbreak the effort must be to eradicate the problem not monitor it! In which case sentinel traps are just a distraction that diverts efforts away from containment and eradication.

If I were to make a criticism of the NBU website and its trap, it's that the instructions to construct and how to use are woeful.

So if it's okay for you to criticise the NBU why criticise me for doing the same?

I shall be contacting the NBU suggesting that these instructions are improved so that the concept of a sentinel trap is fully explained.

CVB

Good luck - not something that will be achieved in a sound bite.

Just had it confirmed that velutina is caught on honey and lager as a bait provided that the concentration of honey is controlled. Which means that wasp traps currently deployed (with recommended honey concentrations) to protect beehives as part of an integrated wasp management approach can be used to detect the present of velutina.

 

[Karol]

I imagine its a question of probability. What is the chance of capturing a queen hornet in spring compared with the increased chance of catching the more numerous worker hornets later on? If a worker is caught then hopefully the nest can be tracked down and destroyed before it produces young queens. If a trap is designed to catch asian queens then it likely that european hornet workers will be caught too and we don't want that to happen do we?

And you've made my point for me, i.e. the sentinel traps don't add value above and beyond simply observing your hives for the first signs of velutina. What sentinel traps do do is attract wasps which can't feed at the trap and will therefore be attracted to the next nearest food source which is quite likely to be a hive.

 

[masterBK]

I don't think you have seen my point at all.

I don't usually have a problem with wasps as my colonies tend to be strong enough and defensive enough to keep them out and invariably eliminate those that are daft enough to try and enter (my northern bees are right hard!!)

Surely if a wasp is attracted to a trap but doesn't get in ie gets no reward then eventually it will be negatively conditioned not to bother with it again. Similarly with hives maybe?

 

[Karol]

The difficulty with forums is that they can easily be taken as personal conversations whereas in fact issues of this nature are generic and one has to consider the lowest common denominator or highest level of risk. So I'm glad that you don't have a wasp problem but that is not the universal experience of a lot of beekeepers. Wasn't too long ago that I was viewed both skeptically and cynically on the forum for suggesting that low efficiency wasp traps made things much worse and elevated the risk to bee hives. Thankfully there are now a host of beekeepers who understand and advocate safer integrated wasp management techniques which avoid altogether the use of low efficiency traps. I really have no wish to rehearse all of those arguments again but if you are interested then you will find plenty of historical threads on the forum on the subject.

I will however explain an element of wasp behaviour which may answer the point you make. Wasps swarm feed or rather work in teams to exploit food sources and to protect those food sources from other wasps. So when a wasp discovers a food source it will go back to its friends and recruit them thus creating a swarm. If a scouting wasp gets batted away from a bee hive it will look for food elsewhere. If it finds a food source it will attract wasps to that food source and all is well and good until that food source is consumed at which point you then have a swarm of wasps looking for food. As carbohydrates become more scarce towards late autumn so starvation emboldens wasps and also concentrates attention on the dwindling number of remaining food sources which of course substantially includes hives and the attacks become more concerted. So a wasp batted away isn't negatively conditioned not to try again later. It's purely a question of least path of resistance/effort for maximum reward. That's why beekeepers lose hives unexpectedly later in the season to wasps with nothing but starved tail up honeybees to show for it.

 

[Beefriendly]

If you want to try a simple experiment to study wasp recruitment to sweet food sources simply stick a "wet comb" after extraction somewhere in your garden, not close to the hives, preferably close to a known wasps nest.
I'll guarantee that within an hour it will be covered with 1000's of bees and you will be able to the count the number of wasps on the fingers of one hand (at most 2).
This easy to perform experiment will give you some idea of how efficient social recruitment in wasp is.

 

[Millet]

If you want to try a simple experiment to study wasp recruitment to sweet food sources simply stick a "wet comb" after extraction somewhere in your garden, not close to the hives, preferably close to a known wasps nest.
I'll guarantee that within an hour it will be covered with 1000's of bees and you will be able to the count the number of wasps on the fingers of one hand (at most 2).
This easy to perform experiment will give you some idea of how efficient social recruitment in wasp is.

Try telling that to my wasps, i put some brood comb from a laying worker colony in a black bag ready to be burnt, after around 1hr they was hundreds of wasps so i moved it near to the fire 1hr later the wasps had found it again with even more swarming around the black bag, they was also a lot of bees too.

 

[Beefriendly]

Try telling that to my wasps, i put some brood comb from a laying worker colony in a black bag ready to be burnt, after around 1hr they was hundreds of wasps so i moved it near to the fire 1hr later the wasps had found it again with even more swarming around the black bag, they was also a lot of bees too.

You are confusing protein feeding on possible dead larvae in your brood combs with sweet feeding by wasps.
The bees would have little interest in it other than the attraction of the smell. If it contained larvae/dead or alive then the wasps would would see it as a source of protein for their larvae.
Try a wet honey frame and tell me what you now see.

 

[Beefriendly]

double post for some reason.

 

[Millet]

You are confusing protein feeding on possible dead larvae in your brood combs with sweet feeding by wasps.
The bees would have little interest in it other than the attraction of the smell. If it contained larvae/dead or alive then the wasps would would see it as a source of protein for their larvae.
Try a wet honey frame and tell me what you now see.

I was confusing nothing as i seen with my own two eye balls what was happening, the frames did have dead drone brood in them but they had turned to chalk just about, the brood frames also contained a fare bit of capped and uncapped honey, that is what the wasps where after, the frames where full of wasps with there heads buried in the cells drinking nectar/honey, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it..

 

[Beefriendly]

Let me check I've got this right. You said your comb was wrapped in a black bag so the wasps did a break and entry into your black bag and you could see them heads down in the cells through the black bag?
Hummmmmm me thinks me knows a wind up merchant when I see one

 

[Millet]

Let me check I've got this right. You said your comb was wrapped in a black bag so the wasps did a break and entry into your black bag and you could see them heads down in the cells through the black bag?
Hummmmmm me thinks me knows a wind up merchant when I see one

You must be hearing voices in your head, that is not good you best get it checked out, have another read. regardless of that the wasps found it pretty quick and also followed it when i moved it.

 

[dpearce4]

NOW NOW Children

Behave nicely or you will both be in detention. I see enough child like squabbling at school during the week and don't want to see it when I am not at work.

Grow up both of you. If you cant play nice then don't play together.

 

[Millet]

NOW NOW Children

Behave nicely or you will both be in detention. I see enough child like squabbling at school during the week and don't want to see it when I am not at work.

Grow up both of you. If you cant play nice then don't play together.

I do play nicely Mr Headmaster but when someone tries to belittle me it is a whole new ball game, and by the way i walked out of School when younger if detention was mentioned, on a regular basis as it happens.. , i'm not one for being groomed into a tax paying do as your told Zombie like everyone else, to feed the corrupt Government.