The Asian Hoornaar is increasingly popping up in Brabant. Fighter Jasper den Bakker is very busy with the wasp species that pays a threat to insects and sometimes for people. “I had sixteen addresses on the route today, but four have already been added. It is extremely busy,” he says.
Pest fighter Jasper den Bakker was on the way to Moerdijk on Tuesday morning to remove the nest of an Asian hornet. A special search group spotted the nest in the municipality.
The Asian Hoornaar accidentally ended up in 2004 in Bordeaux in France via a container ship from China. Since then, the species has spread over France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The first report in our country is from 2017.
It is immediately clear for the pest fighter after a look at the nest in Moerdijk. “That is an Asian. I see it in the shape and size of the nest,” he concludes.
The pest fighter drives daily from one Hoornaarsnest to the other. “It’s extremely busy,” he tells The NOS. Den Bakker is happy that the horners are becoming more famous. According to him, the nests are found faster. “And in this way more nests can also be combated.”
“An ordinary beekeeping suit is not thick enough.”
Together with his colleagues, he starts combating the nest not much later. In addition, he carries a thick orange suit that is lined with a special material as extra protection. “An ordinary beekeeping suit is not thick enough. The sting of an Asian hornet is on average four to five millimeters long. With that they poke through a normal beekeeper suit.”
For the fight against the nest in Moerdijk, Den Bakker uses a lance, a very long telescopic stick. “That way we can puncture the nest with a needle to spray a pesticide in it. That is a natural particulate matter, causing the hornets to stick.”
“Bees no longer dare to go outside due to the attacks of a hornet.”
Karin van Rozendaal, coordinator of the Asian horners search group in the municipality of Moerdijk, looks at how the fighters work. The search group in Moerdijk was set up three years ago by volunteers ‘to make people aware of the Hoornaar problem’. Van Rozendaal is beekeeper and knows better than anyone how annoying the hornet can be. “The horners eat bees, bumble bees and flies. Because of those attacks, the bees no longer dare to go outside, they will no longer get food and they die.”
The main objective of the action is to eliminate the queen of the nest. “The queen ensures that new queens are added at the end of the season. That is on average five hundred, of which usually 10 percent remains. That means that next year about fifty litters will be added, because of this nest alone. That is horribly fast.”
According to Den Bakker, it is impossible to get the Asian hornet all the way out of the Netherlands. “But we can try to keep it manageable,” he says.
Alarm bell
Beekeepers, ecologists and nature lovers in North Brabant ring the alarm about the increase in the Asian hornet. According to them, the insect threatens the Honig bees and other pollinators and therefore also the biodiversity, the variety of plants and animals.
The Noord-Brabant provincial beekeeping consultation has therefore offered a petition to the province. The signatories ask the province to free up sufficient budget so that reports of Asian horners can be followed quickly and professionally. They also call for structural money available so that the fight is not dependent on incidental means and there is continuity in the approach. In addition, they ask for close cooperation with beekeeping and nature organizations and municipalities to work on a coordinated and effective approach.
The petition has been signed by a thousand people so far.