It’s the queens you want to get. If you leave it any later all you are doing is playing catch up. I had my traps out from March last year and so far as I’m aware had no nest in the garden. If it was just us I wouldn’t worry. European hornets are pretty benign - slow and non-aggressive. Not good for bee hives though, or our gite guests who tend to panic.
Thanks for the reminder. The weather is so mild and dry at the moment I think it’s time to fill up our traps again. I use Lipton peach tea because someone said hornets like it. Don’t know how they know, but it does seem to work.
Does it attract things like bees tho’? That’s what I don’t want to do.
Hi Jane, never seen bees in the traps, only hornets, flies, wasps and a few moths. I don’t know whether it’s because the hole is below the trap? Hornets definitely crawl in and then fly upwards. I think perhaps bees are approaching sugar / nectar from above maybe?
OH puts apple juice + cassis in ours. Not caught any queens in the 2 years we’ve been doing it but plenty of ordinary Asian and European hornets. No bees ever.
In my little area… we try to leave the european frelons alone. Unless they are nesting in an area near the kids playground (for example).
The asiatiques frelons are dealt with swiftly, wherever they are located.
Traps are put out by many locals, with quite some success.
Nests are destroyed by the local workmen if they are sited on public/council property.
Asian Frelon nest in 2017, in the oak tree by our house. Neighbour wanted to shoot it down but the cantoniers dealt with it, thank heavens.
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We have lots of European hornets but I haven’t (yet, mercifully) seen an Asian one. We also tend to leave the native ones alone except for when they’d built a nest in the chimney when we first bought the house 30 years ago and then, a couple of years back when they’d started building a nest in the garage. We destroyed that one before they’d got going with it, so presumably they restarted elsewhere.
HOT TIP: If, to remove a hornets nest in a chimney, you decide to light a fire in the fireplace, please make sure all the doors and windows are shut. What happened for us what that they streamed out of the top of the chimney, came straight down and in through the window - directly at us… 
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It needs to be said… since you are dertainly not the first person to have been caught out like that… never seen OH move so fast… 
What terrified me was that, since I am a belt-and-braces kind of person, I was armed with a spray bought from the local Point Vert. There was no escape so I sprayed it straight at them - they instantly dropped dead in mid flight. I then thought “I must have breathed in some of whatever that was…” Bet it’s illegal now!
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Pyrethrin from chrysanthemums, deadly to wasps etc
That’s interesting! Would it have an instantaneous effect? I had assumed, since they just dropped out of the air in full flight, that it must have been some sort of nerve gas thing…
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I use a neem oil/ soap mix for most garden bugs that soapy water does not kill off and it is a lot kinder to the likes of ladybirds etc.
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Will they not accept Lidls cheaper version ??? 
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I’d love to know what the traps look like - just thinking ahead of Summer, as I did seem to get rather alot of wasps last year 
and mosquitoes
Look for piege a frelon / guepes (sorry, no accents) in any large supermarket garden section or Gamm Vert from now onwards Or go on the internet and put in “hornet trap” and you will find masses of videos showing you how to make one from a plastic water bottle. The key thing is the hole must be UNDER the trap.
Something like this or similar:
Mosquitoes are altogether a different issue - we use citronella coils and candles and plug-ins and we’ve bought UV lights, though there is a question mark over whether the latter actually work.
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Had something similar… used to hang it well away from our seating area, with a water/jam mixture to attract wasps and flies …
One time it was left standing on a low wall and I finally realized it had a monster within it… a lizard had got in and gorged itself until it was too big to slither back out of the hole in the base.
It was so relieved when I carefully allowed it to escape out of the top. I watched it gently waddle away.
Thanks alot, that’s very clear and helpful Sue 
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We have used this on our indoor Strelitzia. Very successful.
Is there a trap that’s good for flies? Theere seems to be a small, unpleasant biting fly in central France that we have never seen before. One bit me through socks back in October, and over the (mild) winter they seem have invaded everywhere.
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