The Asian Hoornaar is quickly advancing in Brabant and the rest of the Netherlands. The wasp species is a serious threat to insects and sometimes also for people. According to beekeeper Rob Bink and fighter Peter Buijsse, the moment of waiting is over: “Extinguishing is no longer possible. It is really a matter of controlling.”
The Asian Hoornaar was accidentally introduced in 2004 to Bordeaux in France via a container ship that came from China. Since then, the species has quickly spread over France, Belgium and now also the Netherlands. The first report in our country is from 2017. Now they have even been spotted in Friesland.
“An adult nest eats around 100,000 insects in the season,” beekeeper Bink explains. They not only eat the bees, but also moths, bumble bees and butterflies. Around 1400 different insects. And also soft fruit. The queens even need ten to twelve kilos of insects to grow larvae. That makes the Hoornaar not only a scourge for beekeepers, but also for biodiversity.
Bink himself has not yet had any inconvenience, but a fellow emperor further on does. It had ten cupboards, four of which were completely robbed. “He eats everything: they steal the honey, kill the bees and then you’re done.” He compares the Asian hornet with the supermarket. “In the past we always went separately to the bakery, butcher, fishmonger and greengrocer. Now you go to the supermarket. That Asian also sees the hive as a supermarket. He only has to fly there and then it has proteins and sugar.”
The Asian hornet is usually not a direct danger for people, but those who disrupt a nest can experience the consequences. “If they are disturbed, they come out of their nest en masse and attack. They stitch and squirt poison at your eyes, then you will be disoriented, because you see nothing. They can get stuck.” Such an attack can be dangerous for people with a wasp allergy.
“If people make a report, the fighter will be put to work.”
To keep the distribution under control, beekeeper Bink and fighter Buijsse people call on to report nests on platforms such as Vespa watch. “If people see a nest and make a report of it online, the provincial fighter will be put to work.” The two can also catch, sender and follow horners themselves. They do this via preserving jars with bait fluid and a long tube, with which they turn a transmitter on the back of the hornet.
Such a transmitter weighs 0.16 grams. A hornet himself weighs 0.3 grams and can wear eighty percent of his own weight. So it should not be too heavy. With that transmitter the commuting can be followed between the nest and the bait. The horners can be traced from three hundred to four hundred meters.
The Hoornaar can be found everywhere. “They are in the ground, but also in the hedge. The largest nest will hang in the tree about twenty meters.” There are thousands of hornets in such a nest. According to Buijsse we can no longer get rid of the Asian exotic. “But as long as you control it, everything remains in balance.” And control is desperately needed, he emphasizes. “In France you already have areas with twenty nests per square kilometer.”
Through De Beeperdagen, among others, Bink and Buijsse try to create more awareness about the Hoornaar. “Note and help us search,” calls Bink. According to the two, the queens have to be caught in the spring or autumn before they can build large nests that hang high in the tree like skippy balls. “Then we need aerial platforms. That’s why they have to be kept small.”
According to Buijsse, controlling the species has now become a necessity: “If we let them go, we know what to do in seven years.” He is referring to the fact that the number of insects in France has fallen sharply by the Asian Hoornaar.