I’ve been more worried about Yellow Legged Hornet (Vespa velutina, “YLH”) than Varroa for over a year now. When I read in the American Bee Journal that it arrived in Georgia and was a smaller hornet with more populous colonies than the Asian Giant Hornet, I had a very high expectation from the get-go that it would be beyond the scope of human abilities to conquer the task of eradication.
But at that time I didn’t realize that YLH was even more deadly to honey bees than the Giant Hornet, or that it could drive native pollinators to the brink of extinction. I’m breathing deep, reading up, and thinking hard. I have a feeling this is going to be a “duzie” for the beekeeping world in the US. In contrast, I expect our long-standing enemy Varroa will soon become a minor pest due to big breeders jumping on board with Randy Oliver’s outlines for breeding and maintaining mite resistance. I did a long time ago, and varroa is a minor pest for me now, even in gentle productive hives. But YLH is a whole new storm cloud. And we know the devastation it has already left it its wake in Europe. I can’t believe I’m only now getting a chance to write about it. (See what it takes these days for me to sit down and write?)
Randy Oliver and Charles Linder are in my opinion 100% right about their calls to action, but do you think, even if all of us (including the US military) did everything we could do, we could really eradicate it? And if we don’t eradicate it, our bee industries (as well as our native pollinators) get eaten alive regardless. Every fiber in my body wants to be wrong about that, but common sense knows better. These hornets make too many new queens each fall, and nests are too hard to find. You know how populations of invasives can explode after being newly introduced to fresh territories. And what if a mated queen hitches a ride on a vehicle to Arkansas or Mississippi or California, or my backyard this spring?
I just got the book, Asian Hornet, a Beekeepers Guide to Defenses against the Yellow Legged Hornet by Andrew Durham and read it. Adapting to this new pest will be very difficult but essential. I wonder if our southern bee breeders will end up migrating their hives to the Canadian border for the July-October season. I have a hunch that one of our best defenses against it will be some kind of “Trojan bait” that the hornets will take back to their nests that will kill the nest (like borax bait for ants). Researchers need to be jumping on this NOW. This, or whatever else may work, will be basic tools every beekeeper in the temperate and southern US will need. And if it takes more than a couple years to approve its use, we are already behind. WAY behind.
This scourge is not just for beekeepers and native pollinators. The nest density per acre in both rural and urban settings, and the aggressiveness of these hornets in their nest vicinity makes this species a major and indiscriminate pest to everyone.
This has gotten me pondering the verse from Deuteronomy 7:20: “Moreover the LORD thy God will send the hornet among them…” and Joshua 24:12 “And I sent the hornet…” So if the LORD can, and indeed did, send hornets to “destroy” and “drive out” his enemies, might we do well to seriously investigate whether there are any ways in which we, both individually and collectively as a society, have made ourselves enemies to God? What I find with this kind of introspection is that it puts me in the right frame of mind to work with others, think creatively about solutions, and not give up hope.
For further reading, check out Veto-pharma’s articles here: https://www.blog-veto-pharma.com/en/asian-hornets/