Protection against vespa velutina

We just installed a protection against vespa velutina on our flowhive, it prevents the hive from being totaly destroyed by them

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Very interesting, any chance of a few more close up shots. I would like to know more.

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I will try to find old ones before we installed it. But you can click on the pictures to get full size.

That’s good - would function as a mouse guard too!

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How does that work?
Do the wasps not get in through the mesh?

The mesh is 5.5mm square, so 99% of wasps won’t come in. Some get inside, but they die trying to get out.
There is an entrance at the top, but last year bees tend to not use it.

The purpose is to give the bees some space around the hive where they can freely move and prevent wasps from mass getting in. We protected 4 hives last year.

What is your location?

South west of France.

I’ve never seen a wasp/hornet like that one. Just wondered where they existed.

They originated in China and arrived in France around 2004, apparently in a crate of Chinese pottery. They are causing big problems in France and Spain, decimating hives very rapidly. I have a beekeeping acquaintance in Provence who lost 4 hives to them last year.

Right, I see now that the Hornet won’t get through the mesh. My understanding is that they don’t enter hives normally, preferring to hawk for flying bees at the entrance. I would have thought that anything that slows down a bee’s journey to the entrance (getting through the mesh, for example) might prove the ideal opportunity for a snatch.

details here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10340-013-0537-3

As you say, most of the time, they catch them flying near the hive. But they won’t kill the hive. The hive got more bees now, so the 10-20 bees they are catching everyday won’t kill the hive. If they get in, they will.

The photo is from a friend. We are catching 60-100 hornet per day, so the agression start to slow down. Our colonies are fined so far.

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there seems to be a lot of dead bodies inside?

I asked somebody who lives in France about this and he said it looked like a recipe for disaster. He said anything that slowed the bees down at the entrance meant the hornets could easily pick them off. He said hornets hunt at the entrance not inside the hive

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As long as the bees can’t get the dead out, there are dead bodies, we just have to open the white part to get them out.

Are they hornets on the outside waiting for the bees to land? Lots of questions, sorry, must be a difficult problem to deal with. You mentioned in an earlier post that there is an entrance at the top, where do the bees exit/enter the hive?[quote=“Alex64, post:6, topic:8022”]
There is an entrance at the top, but last year bees tend to not use it.
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Hornets are after the honey. As soon as there is not enough bees at the entrance, they get in.

The picture are from bee hives 2 km away from ours, last year, they lost 95% of their hives. 0% lost at the moment. So yeah, it looks bad but it works.

As soon as we will not have more than 1 hornet waiting in front of your hives, we will get them out.

The hornet catch them in the air most of the time.
99% of the bees exit from the mesh. To enter, it depends of the hive, some using the entrance, some using the mesh. When they use the mesh with too much pollen on their leg, they have hard time to get in.