[Laurieston]

While quietly watching my hives yesterday I noticed a hornet cruising near the entrance.  They are so massive, like 747s compared to the bees.  Anway, it appeared to try to grab a bee every now and then as one passed, seemingly with no success.  Then, moments later I saw it flying away seemingly a different shape.  It landed on a branch just over me, and I HEARD it chewing a bee to pieces and dropping the bits it did not want.  Now I know what nightmares are made of...

Now I just need to teach it to only take drones.

Does anyone have experience of hornets damaging colonies?

[cloddopper]

i had about six hives killed by hornets out of the hundred  or so  summer hives .
 As hornets are protected creatures i was advised by the bee inspector not to kill off the hornet nests inside the dead hives.
 
I ended up putting on hornet guards,  similar to mouse guards after the first few years of commercially keeping and the hornet problem almost disappeared.
 

[ZacB]

As hornets are protected creatures

Only protected in Germany (European Hornet).

[cloddopper]

Zac I think you'll find that the EU wide wild animals flora & fauna protective legislation  also applies here in the UK and that's the reason why you can't wantonly kill them if they are pursuing their natural  instincts .

If the nest was in a hospital , old folks residential home , school or other public building then its  a different scenario ..even then I think your supposed to engage a licenced pest controller to snuff them out.

[regen]

The hornet  is not afforded any legal protection in the UK (It has had protection in Germany since the 1980s?)

However they are not usually particularly dangerous and only attack if seriously threatened. Most responsible pest controllers will look for reasons not to destroy a nest.

Regen

[cloddopper]

Thanks Regen ,
It was my bee disease officer ( BDO ) who did the ministry's annual hive inspections who was the one that said they were protected under EU wild life & habitats legislation , happen he was a tad over zealous in elastic borders .

[cloddopper]

Some thing has struck a chord in my head so I looked up the European hornet wasp .

That's definitely not the massive 2 inch long matt milk chocolate brown bodied with an almost lemon yellow on the rear 1/3 of it's thorax hornets that were found in my hives .
 
Further searching & looking at the pictures available on " Bugs life " brings up the a hornet that looks very similar .

It is the oriental hornet ... evidently in 2010 ... " Interceptions of Oriental hornets imported into the UK have occurred throughout the year (February, March, April, May, June, December).
 Those type of hornets were in our home  hives/ out apairies  in July & August 1996 when we lived near Wisbech Cambridgeshire in East Anglia .

 There are a lot of orchards and several large fruit importers within 15 miles of most of the hives .

[ZacB]

Just to add to this thread regarding the European Hornet which we commonly find around Suffolk please look at the following link, esp page 3 (no jokey comments please )
http://www.vespa-crabro.com/hornets.htm
To answer the original post, yes they may take a few of our bees but I wouldn't consider a threat and are quite magnificent to see. A true gentle-ish giant to be admired & respected - not splatted at the first opportunity.

If this thread had been about the Asian Hornet (Vespa Velutina) currently hawking hives in Europe I might be saying something different.

Fortunately the Giant Asian Hornet (Vespa Mandarinia) which will look to gain entry into hives still resides in Asia and hasn't moved into Europe despite lots of photo's being displayed in the media - a hugh 'frightening' looking hornet sells better than the somewhat smaller havoc causing Vespa Velutina.

Now as for wasps.......splat as many of those as you wish but the first line of defence has to be strong colonies kept in hives with no holes and reduced entrances during the waspy period.

Not an expert in this field so don't quote me on any of this without first checking yourself but I did look into a little when the Asian Hornet first made it into the media.

[cloddopper]

Good post Zac,
I encountered the European hornet wasp quite a lot during my bee keeping years. It's now quite common here in SA18 ..we found we were in the flight line of a nest that were taking the insects off the front flower beds ...... a bit scary for the ladies of the home as they both have long hair .  Me?  the hornets just saw the shiny bald egg and decided to go elsewhere .

Six or so years ago we were caravaning in Southern Germany .
 On the way back to the UK  we stopped at a bit of a run down camp site in Palz near the big wind farm . As it was a  hot afternoon a soon as we'd got the awning up I legged it to the showers wearing flip flops & shorts.
I nearly had to go and get  toilet paper , for not long after I turned the shower on  half a dozen or more European hornets decided to join me in the shower cubicle to get a drink .
As I got out there PDQ still dripping wet , finding that several of the window cills were full of dead hornets I discovered there was a tremendous amount of them crawling around onn the wash room floors . Talk of having  dimples on goose pimples was an understatement. .

 Sitting on the porcelain with them flying around you and seeing one or two walk across the loo paper or the door a few inches from you nose was rather disconcerting I can tell you .

I asked about them at the reception and was told ,  " we are lucky to have them , people come from all over the world to study & photograph them whilst staying here "