Monday’s meeting was very timely and highly informative.
Timely because the issue of an increasing number of Asian Hornets and nests being found has made the national media, for example this article in today’s (Thu 17th August) Guardian:
At Monday’s meeting David Blower took us through how to build a simple Asian Hornet (AH) trap. These in turn divide into a killing trap and one where whatever is found in the trap can be released.
David explained that in the spring, when the AH colonies are just stating to build, killing as may AHs as possible may just prevent the colony from building up.
However come this time of year and AHs may well be from an established nest that needs to be found and destroyed. Hence in late summer onwards it’s important to just trap an AH so that the NBU staff can then release and track it back to it’s nest.
A killing trap is fairly simple to construct. Cut the top off a 2l drink bottle, invert it into the body of the bottle, and put some suitable attractant in; fruit juice with additional sugar is recommended by the BBKA. I might add a couple of drops of vinegar to make sure bees aren’t attracted.
The ‘roof’ in David’s left hand, is quite important. The external yellow colour is, apparently, attractive to Asian hornets. The inside however is painted black so that when the Asian hornets enter, if they look up they don’t see a white surface (i.e the sky) and hence are less likely to fly up to find the way out.
David also stressed that his beer, on the table in front of him, should never be used in an AH trap!
There are various ways to turn such a trap into, well, just a trap and not a killing trap. One way is to put a ‘wick’ in the bottom, such as a J-cloth, and soak that with the attractant. That way any AHs, and any other insects, that enter the trap won’t drown. This approach is also suggested for the commercial traps, such as that by Veto-pharma.
It is important to monitor ‘catch’ traps daily so that any by-catch (i.e. native insects) can be released. There are variants of how a trap can be made that makes releasing by-catch as easy as possible; see the references below for some ideas.
Given the increasing number of Asian Hornets and nests being found this year Shipston Beekeepers encourages all beekeepers set up suitable traps. Further information on traps is on the BBKA website:
https://www.bbka.org.uk/faqs/how-to-make-an-asian-hornet-trap
And this is a leaflet from the NBU on how to make traps
European Foul Brood
Well this was not the jolliest of evenings, was it!
David described how he found EFB in an out-apiary he shares with the National Trust at Charlecote. As a bee farmer and member of the DASH (Disease Assurance Scheme for Honeybees) scheme David is able to ‘self-certify’ that EFB exists in the Apiary and indeed use an LFT to confirm it. David issued a ‘stop’ notice (nothing in, nothing out) on the apiary and a few days later, with the Seasonal Bee Inspector, all the brood and super frames were burned.
It’s thus important that beekeepers are able to identify possible EFB in their colonies. To help members know what to look for David had lots of photographs of EFB-infected cells and larvae and indeed some videos for members to see; we’ll put some of these on the website shortly.
The suspicion of the SBI is that a local beekeeper did not properly and fully clean up after they had an EFB outbreak and this allowed the disease to linger. If nothing else this helps stress the importance of registering all apiaries on BeeBase. The SBI will now visit all apiaries within 3km of the Charlecote outbreak but if your site is not on BeeBase then the NBU doesn’t know you exist.
Two of our members at the evening mentioned that they have colonies just 5kms from the Charlecote site……
The evening ended with the 100 Club draw.