There are more enjoyable activities than clearing nests with pesky Asian hornets. For Rob Voesten, however, it is daily fare. At the moment he has his hands full. Like on Monday evening when he and Jo Kraaijvanger, chairman of the Bladelse beekeepers, climbed into a cherry picker to remove a nest.
With protective suits and a vacuum cleaner, the duo attacked the nest of Asian hornets. “It was an experience”, Kraaijenvanger looks back. “It seems to be the largest litter this year,” adds Voesten.
The professional catcher should know. He has already removed more than fifty nests of Asian hornets this year. Especially in Brabant. They are not small colonies that are being defused. Each nest can house up to 1500 hornets.
Last year, 140 official sightings of nests with the Asian hornet were reported throughout the Netherlands. That number will already be exceeded by mid-2023. The insect has a strong preference for honey bees for food. That is why the Asian hornet is on a European list of harmful exotics.
But combat is no child’s play. This is evident in Bladel. “It took us a month to trace the nest. At the top of the cherry picker, Rob sucked up hornets with a vacuum cleaner for ten minutes. If the hornets feel threatened, they attack on your face. A hornet can sting, but also poison spray. You shouldn’t get that in your eyes,” says Kraaijenvanger.
“I tried to chug out the poison, but it wasn’t my suit.”
Despite the protective suit, a hornet managed to get hold of the chairman. “I felt something of liquid on my lip and then also in my mouth. It tasted like nothing. Fortunately, it did not become thick or itch. I wanted to puff it out, but that was not possible with that gauze in front of my face.”
According to Voesten, people should not clear a nest themselves. “You really should leave that to professionals.”
“We can miss the hornet like a toothache.”
After the first storm of hornets had settled at the top of the cherry picker, Kraaijenvanger and Voesten were able to get closer in their bakkie. “Rob sucked up some hornets at the entrance of the nest. The nest was cut from the tree with loppers and put in a box. The caught hornets are poisoned or die in a freezer. We can miss the Asian hornet like a toothache,” says the chairman of the beekeepers’ association.
Voests works long days because of the great distances he has to cover. To clear nests, it sometimes goes from Eindhoven to Bergen op Zoom. “Cleaning up a nest itself can sometimes take hours. I’m working on it full time from June to the end of October.”
“If you leave a nest, you will have five nests next year.”
According to Voesten, it is important to empty the entire nest. It mainly concerns the queens, because they take care of the offspring. “If you leave a nest, you can assume that the following year there will be five times as many nests,” says Voesten.
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