<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/electric-harps-protect-honey-bees-from-asian-hornets/>
"By 2021, Michel Costa had become a frustrated veteran of an obscure yet
devastating war in Europe. The enemy: invasive Asian hornets, which had been
massacring his honey bees by the thousand. Costa had fought the invaders on the
outskirts of Bordeaux, France, swatting them with an electric racket as they
hovered outside his hives. He had taken the battle to the trees, crystallizing
them by injecting their nests with a chemical disinfectant. And he had fought
them from the ground, blasting the highest of their nests into oblivion with a
troop of local hunters armed with shotguns. But whatever Costa and his comrades
tried, the hornets kept coming.
So that year, when Costa, a retiree and avid beekeeper, discovered a new weapon
with the potential to change the course of the entire war, he was intrigued.
Several companies had begun selling so-called “electric harps,” which they
claimed could kill the hornets in droves by electrocuting them as they flew
through. When a nearby apiary reported problems with a swarm of them, he leapt
at the opportunity to test one, placing it on top of a bin where hornets had
gathered. Costa then watched in awe as the harp killed “hundreds” of them, one
by one, within minutes. “The demonstration of its effectiveness was
staggering,” he says.
Until that day, Costa and many other European beekeepers had struggled to find
any efficient means of repelling the hornets’ attacks. Asian hornets first
arrived in France from China in 2004, having hitched a ride in a shipping
crate. Back in their Asian homeland, they predate a diverse diet of other
creatures, including honey bees. The honey bees indigenous to those territories
have evolved strategies to evade the marauding hornets over time. But the
hornets’ invasion of Europe caught local honey bees defenseless. According to
one estimate, an Asian hornet can decapitate, dismember and feed the vulnerable
European honey bees to their larvae at a rate of 30 per day.
The hornets have been causing chaos in apiaries across western Europe,
penetrating deeper into the continent every year. First France fell, then
Spain, Portugal, Italy, Britain, Austria, Germany, Belgium and others. One
scientific analysis estimated that up to 29 percent of France’s bee colonies
could collapse every year as a result. Other countries came to similar
conclusions. This not only increases the cost of honey production, but also
places entire ecosystems at risk as a result of the reduced pollination
activity, in which honey bees play a significant part. And this threat is no
longer contained within Europe. In August 2023, scientists confirmed that Asian
hornets had flown into US airspace for the first time."
Via
Positive.News
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
