Hello from Southern France.

[Carl]

A quick hello all.
We moved to Southern France back in 2016 and after renovating a house have now, following my wifes lead, got back into beekeeping.
We were very happy with our Warre and Top bar hives in Dorset so will once more go that way now here along with a Dadant to mix things up and see gow that goes for us.
So far we caught a swarm 18 days ago and are earberly now watching the entrance of the Warre i dropped it into and we also bought a nuc locally to populate the Dadant and that one is looking great .

Further updates as we go and i hope as well as picking some more stuff up i can contribute.

The photo is of the nuc first thing in the morning so no activity yet. A few hours later all was busy as anything. We had to wait three days to transfer the bars into the Dadant you see sitting there waiting due to some horrendous rain that swept through. All went well and the queen was seen strolling around.
The cage you see on the Dadant is a prototype i made and was fitting. It is not in use yet but we suffer a lot of Asian hornets here and the idea is that it disprupts their interference of the landing board and entrance of the hive.
My wife though has deployed our first line of defence, that of her hornet catcher concoction in water bottles hung around. These are working exceptionally well and we have yet to see interference at the hive.

Regards. Carl.

 

[enrico]

Welcome. Good to see you have taken it up again

 

[castanea]

Bonjour Carl
Welcome to France which part are you in?

 

[Carl]

Bonjour Castanea,

We are North of Pau in the Hautes Pyrénées.

 

[RichardK]

The cage you see on the Dadant is a prototype i made and was fitting. It is not in use yet but we suffer a lot of Asian hornets here and the idea is that it disprupts their interference of the landing board and entrance of the hive.
My wife though has deployed our first line of defence, that of her hornet catcher concoction in water bottles hung around. These are working exceptionally well and we have yet to see interference at the hive.

Regards. Carl.

Hi Carl - in my experience there is very little Asian Hornet activity at this time of year. Nests are being established and so it's early days. Come July I start to see increasing numbers (I've caught some this year - possibly just the fondatrices / queens) with it getting quite bad come September / October thru to the first frosts. You may already be aware of these, but I'm investing I'm investing in a couple to supplement my arsenal of bottle traps this year: Jabeprode - dispositifs contre la prolifération du frelon asiatique

 

[Carl]

Cheers Richard, i will have a look at that link.

 

[Just]

I know this is a different species of hornet, My question is would it work on the Asian hornets?

 

[Swarm]

It would work on any hapless little creature, quite a cruel death for a small bird or mammal.