Before we get onto that - just a reminder of how on edge people are. A banal but heated discussion between someone with a right to park in the shared courtyard, and someone else whose right is pretty well non-existent escalated into a heated exchange between four neighbours yesterday evening. One person with nothing to do with the conversation got right in there and started hurling accusations around in a very heated manner. Now while I admit that the person in question would beat herself up if put in a paper bag on her own, it is evidence of the short fuse people are on, and when given the opportunity to get stuck into something that is non-Covid-19 related, will do just that. Walk away people! It ruined a lovely evening.
But on to more interesting things - the fight against the Asian hornet. Before anyone says anything about "nature", these are an invasive non-native species that can eat their way through a hive of honey bees in about a week. There is no up side to them. We were recruited in February to be part of an "observatoire", made up of 56 sites across our district, to try to trap queens in the period up to mid-May when they are laying and nurturing the queens that will create the big nests of the summer. Stopping one queen now prevents between 10 and 20 nests of hornets later in the summer, each of which can overwinter a further 5 queens. Think of all those social distancing tree diagrams you've seen recently.
Anyway, we are hosts to 3 traps, one at home, one where the cats are and one with a client who has had trouble with hornets in the past. The traps are designed to entice the queens in, but not let them out again (although their efficacy in that is also part of the test).
In the trap you put a pot of bait with a lot of pebbles or similar, so that good insects don't drown in the bait which is made up of a third dark, sweet beer, a third fruit syrup ideally blackcurrant or grenadine (in our case out of date Ribena), and a third dry white wine, to keep bees away from it.
Today, John checked the one with the cats, as they needed feeding, and we think we have caught one! The photo below has been sent to the main man running the observatoire for his views, so I will confirm if we have been successful properly when he gets back to me. We are ever so excited though.
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