Hornet!

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thenovice

Field Bee
Joined
Apr 29, 2014
Messages
533
Reaction score
1
Location
Canterbury
Hive Type
14x12
Number of Hives
Aim for 4 but tend to end with 15
Just as I arrived, a huge hornet crawled under one of my hives yesterday. I went down on all fours and studied the thing. it was too dark to define the species but I assume it was a european one. this is the first one I see in the uk and it was a lot bigger than the ones I have seen before in the south of Europe. Could it have been a queen? What was it doing under my hive anyway. it walked on the OMF for at least 5 minutes before disappearing. It was totally ignored by the couple of bees that were also under there. I always thought they ambushed bees in flight?
 
Quite a few around my way, big orange intimidating looking things that sound like giant drones when they fly. At the moment I quite often see them around the ivy flowers mostly appear to like picking off wasps.... Have also seen them take out large dragonflies, they pin them down and bite off their heads! ... Have had the odd one or two visit the hives looking for easy food, but have not yet actually witnessed them taking any bees.. Although I have no doubt they do.
 

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