@Stella @David_Spardo
Not quite true,
Lessor is a noun referring to a person or entity who grants a lease, such as a property owner or landlord, often paired with the term.
The correct word to use in your sentence “All snakes ……etc.” is “lesser”
@Stella @David_Spardo
Not quite true,
Lessor is a noun referring to a person or entity who grants a lease, such as a property owner or landlord, often paired with the term.
The correct word to use in your sentence “All snakes ……etc.” is “lesser”
Reminds me of the cartoon of an office with a sign “Pedantic Society” and a visitor asking: “Shouldn’t that be Society of Pedants?”
Righto… I feel it’s going to be one of those days… ![]()
(and just the thought has got me smiling thank heavens)
Important question:
Exactly where is the correct spot to place the Asian Frelon Trap? ![]()
Of course it is, and I realised my mistake before I got to the end of your sentence. ![]()
It certainly is, and also what does one look like?
I’ve recently lost the wild bee hive that used to live in the front wall of my roofless big barn. My neighbours assure me that it’s been there for over forty years at least, but sadly last year there were no signs of life.
For the last four or five years I would regularly see a good handful of Frelons hovering outside the nest waiting to catch the bees as they entered or left the nest, and I took some mean pleasure in catching them in a child’s fishing net and stamping on them.
It begs the question of what are the natural predators for the Asiatic Hornet in their original habitat? Googling this, it seems that there may have been a break-through discovery, for
“Bee-killing Asian hornets spreading across Europe now face a natural enemy that lures them to destruction - a carnivorous North American plant, French experts say.
The head of a botanical garden in Nantes, western France, says the pitcher plant Sarracenia devours Asian hornets - but not European hornets. Nor does it eat bees or wasps.
Romaric Perrocheau recently found a Sarracenia stem full of dead hornets.”
Back on thread - a good question, Stella, which I shan’t be pedantic about . . . I’d say there’s no such place as ‘a correct spot’. Having just awoken from winter’s hibernation, the queens are desperate for food, and will smell the beer/sweet juice mixture from wherever they are. As Earthdave found, they are not in woodland or open ground, they will have over-wintered in somewhere sheltered, such as an outbuilding or the roof of your house. Any spot is better than no spot.
My suggestion, however, is ‘Hang it/them at a distance from your house” - you don’t want them coming indoors now the weather is getting warmer.
@Bosendorfer when you say it’s easy to build these traps is the yellow thing on top of the 1.5L plastic water bottle essential and where do I get it?
What else could I use as a trap that I wouldn’t have to go to a shop for ?
Hi Karen - rather than explain, here’s a short YT video (actually about catching wasps, but the bottle technique is the same). I suggest that it’s a good idea to put a couple of staples through the plastic, to hold the two halves together - video
Interesting. Easy method to catch these Asian hornets just using a plastic water bottle
But luckily the first comment visible said : unlike the video, DO NOT USE HONEY IN THE BOTTLE TRAP. USE JAM WITH WATER, OR CIDER INSTEAD. AS IF YOU USE HONEY YOU’LL ATTRACT THE BEES INTO THE TRAP, THAT YOU’RE TRYING TO SAVE by catching these Asian hornets.
Is there any substance to put in the bottle trap that will just attract these Asian hornets and not ordinary wasps as well?
Off to make a trap with jam now.
It’s called a Tap Trap and you can find them easily online.
Ah, yes… we must place things correctly just like all other essential bits of kit. ![]()
(But should the Trap be to the left or the right of the house?
and should one be using Imperial or Metric measurements to find the correct distance away from the house ???
)
Sounds like someone has been on the sherry
![]()
The recommended bait solution is 1/3 white wine, 1/3 beer, 1/3 sirop (grenadine, fruits rouges). Don’t drink it all yourself.
Just a few tablespoons is all you need; you’re not trying to drown them, just attract them. In fact it is better if they don’t drown, the longer they are alive in your trap, the longer they give off pheromones which attract others. I have seen this in action; as soon as I caught one, I caught four more within hours.
Those yellow caps can be found often at bricolage stores, maybe other places (garden centres?). But if you have no access, you can cut a bottle and turn the top portion upside down and tape it on the top like a funnel. Drill an 8mm hole in the plastic cap to let them in. Drill many 6mm and smaller holes in the sides to let everything else escape.
You can’t direct only Asian hornets in via the bait. You will get other beasts who will mostly escape through your holes. You may get a very few European hornets. I have heard of no solution to this. A sad side effect of this necessary campaign.
Unfortunately the moths that get in can’t get out.
That’s possible but I haven’t seen any moths in any of my traps (4 different designs, some with big side grills, some with those caps, some with the funnel design).
Another interesting post - but worth a little thought. Your concept regarding the pheromones links with that of Jim24’s earlier post describing him stamping on the hornets to kill them in a net. This is surely not a good idea - because when any wasp, bee, or hornet is under physical attack by a human it instantly gives off powerful pheromones that attract others to come to it’s assistance. Hence - don’t swat a wasp who wants a bit of your picnic !
Personally, I always keep enough liquid in the trap to drown them. It isn’t a quick end, but much faster than leaving them to starve to death - or what else do you do ? Even the specialised ‘Ornetin’ trap requires you to drown them in water after trapping them. I just can’t see the point of making an ecologically important trapping exercise over-complicated like this.
You’re lucky.
I believe the pheromone effect is more significant later in the season when male workers release hormones signaling a food source. But even the queens apparently could release pheromones when trapped. This doesn’t dangerously ‘rile up’ the others nearby, it just draws them in. I have been around the traps and seen no sign of aggression or upset; they just go to the trap and try to get in.
I don’t see this as unnecessarily complicated; it serves a purpose to draw in more. I actually dropped a small flat piece of wood into one of mine so that it could be used as a raft, again to allow the hornet to survive and attract others. I can’t prove that this is the reason but my traps have had many Asian hornets the past two weeks; one held 21 caught in a couple of days. Mind you, this one was close to the old chimney that used to hold a honeybee colony, so perhaps there are residual smells there also attracting them.