Asian hornets, heat wave: this Toulouse beekeeper expects the worst for his bees
By Quentin Marais
Published on
Secretary of the Syndicate of Beekeepers of Occitanie (SAO), Stephane Theron, 51 years old, has had bees for nearly a decade, nearly Toulouse : from Tournefeuille to Rieumes via Frouzens and le Fousseret. And as the month of August 2022 is fast approaching, the owner of around twenty hives does not hide his concern.
The ubiquitous Asian hornet
Number 1 opponent of beekeepers since its arrival in France in 2004, the Asian hornet continues to sow discord in the hives. ” I face this problem every year.. And it is not weakening, quite the contrary,” sighs Stéphane Théron. The damage measured since he started beekeeping is already very significant. “There have been times when, year after year, I lost almost 80% of my colonies, partly because of the Asian hornet. »
Double impact
During his experience, Stéphane Théron was able to notice the double impact that this pest has on its proteges. “There are the bees that make take, capture when they return from their harvest flight. It’s embarassing. But the biggest impact is the stress than the occasional Asian hornets. Indeed, the latter operate in a very particular way, with serious consequences for the bees.
“The hornet hovers, and it disturbs the bees returning from their prospection to find nectar and pollen. their work of harvesting which is essential to the survival of the colony. “
The beekeeper goes on. “In the Toulouse conurbation, it’s a real disaster, it’s absolute horror when you arrive, you look at your hives and you see in front of each of them about twenty hornets hovering, which you see all the bees huddled togetherto make the cluster to prevent the hornet from entering and that they no longer go out to work…”
And the European hornet?
If the Asian hornet arrived in France in 2004, the Old Continent was already composing with the European hornet. “It has always coexisted with the bees. There is one who, from time to time, comes and captures a bee, but it remains very limited and measured”, estimates the secretary of the Syndicat des Apiculteurs d’Occitanie. “There is no impact of the European hornet on the colonies. It’s really focused on the Asian hornet.”
Unity is strength ?
Yet the bees are plummeting in numbers. “A colony will, depending on the time of year, from 20 to 60,000 bees. There is one colony, and one queen per hive. Most of them are worker bees, and a few hundred males are called drones. They are present during the period from April to August,” explains the beekeeper. When a hornet gets a little too close to the hive, “it’s happened before that the bees wrap around him to increase its temperature, and kill it that way”. However, Stéphane Théron tempers. “It’s not super efficient and it doesn’t work every time. But it’s the only way they’ve found to defend themselves…”
What about trapping?
And alongside the defense of bees, various techniques for trapping this invasive species have emerged. “There is the classic method, where you add syrup with a little wine and beer. But the problem is that it is rarely selective, regrets the beekeeper. Me, I even tried to make cages to position around my hives to prevent the hornets from entering, but they manage to enter despite everything, or else to capture the bees outside…” The Toulousain summarizes, with once of despair: “there are things that exist, but none has really demonstrated full efficiency against the Asian hornet”.
“What works best today is to group all the hives together. Because when you have a hornet’s nest nearby, there are a number of hornets that go hunting, and this is the same whether it attacks one or 20 hives. So the pressure on the bees is much less when you have 20 hives together than if you have one.”
The fear of the next few months
If, for the time being, in 2022, Stéphane Théron does not deplore attacks by Asian hornets on his hives, he does not claim victory. “It’s still a bit early: they are looking for protein from August. There are places in France where you can already see them. I haven’t seen any on my hives. But it will not be long…”
And the question of global warming then resurfaces. “Normally, predatory hornets combine on the first frosts. But it is rare that they occur in November…”
“The combination is going to be very complicated…”
And even beyond the Asian hornet, this fear is also based on heat waves. “They dried the flowers a lot. The nectar harvest has been stopped both in June and July. On one of the nectariferous resources that could not develop due to the lack of rainfall,” laments the beekeeper. Who announces the color. “We have a spring and a summer which are very hot, and are not not favorable the collection of nectar by bees. And if we have additional hornet pressure from August, the accumulation is going to be very complicated…”
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