Natural Beekeeping International Forum

[Adriaan]

Hi All,

This winter I made my first kTBH and put it in my orchyard. I have been baiting it with lemmon grass oil in hopes of attracting a swarm.

No luck so far.

today I noticed a european hornet queen entering and when opened the pannel to the viewing window I saw that she had begun building a nest.

I am inclined to let the nest devellop: its 20m away from my beestand, more then 5 m from a footpath and 40m from any house.

European hornets are the least aggresive of all wasp, they hunt for flies and musquito's mostly and are not very common in Belgium.

This is a very late nest to be so small and without workers yet, maybe the first nest was distroyed by the heavy rains we had this season.

Does anyone have had bad experiances with these creatures with regard to beekeeping?

[rays]

Having had a similar experience earlier this year, I posted describing my method for removing the queen hornet.

Having watched European hornets several times last year flying over my top-bar hive and plucking my worker bees out of mid-air, I felt it would be wiser to remove her from the hive next door before she set-up home in it.