Predators in the garden
I spent some time watching our Asian hornets this weekend – despite the fact that they are preying on our bees, they are fascinating creatures. Watching them as they moved around the garden and the beehives was really interesting, and I began to think that live bees may not always be their number one choice of food nor are they quite as fearsome on their own.
I’ve caught a couple of hornets on film scavenging on spider webs where they certainly didn’t stick around when the spider came out to see what was happening (despite the spider being much smaller than them and I would have thought, relatively easy pickings). I watched one hornet in particular moving from dead flower head to dead flower head before flying off ignoring the live bees in front of the hives. These flower heads looked remarkably similar to a fly or bee parceled up on a web so I can only think she was looking for an easy meal and wasn’t about to get involved in hunting bees. We’ve also still got wild plums rotting on the trees around our hives and the hornets seem to like snacking on those too, ignoring the bees coming and going below.
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But there’s no getting away from it, some of them do like bees – here are a few shots of them hunting in front of our hives, note the green hornet guards at the entrance which stop them getting into the hives by reducing the size of the hive opening. Once you see them hunting like this, they are unlikely to go away empty handed…
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As I watched, I started looking at the spiders webs near the hives (and there are lots as it’s a wild meadow). The spiders like our bees too – I wonder who’s got more of our bees this year, the hornets or the spiders?
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Great pictures Jon. Your Asian hornets look just like mine!! LOL Love your little guard bees on the landing board defending the hive! Have you seen them come out and chase the hornet away – I have. Quite interesting behaviour – but then they chase me away too if I don’t treat them right!! I wonder if they will develop a strategy to deal with the hornets given time. I have a felling they might. I have birds that take my bees as well. Robins have a fondness for them! I often see one lurking round the hive! And unless I visit very early for a check – there are never any dead bees outside the hive!! I know they throw out the sick and dying because if I have an early check – there they are on the paving stone in front – but all gone later in the morning!
Thanks Nicki. Your bees sound more ferocious than ours – some of ours are really gentle which makes them sitting ducks. Our hives are all on grass so it’s difficult to see what happens to the outcasts – maybe I should put out some paving slabs next year so we can see what you are seeing.
Jon,
Amazing pictures! I thought the same thing about who caught more bees…the spider or the hornet. LOL
I’ve caught frogs eating our girls, along with birds, spiders, and wasps! Poor things, they have so much to battle. Do you have the small hive beetle and wax moth there?
Thanks Julie – I think the main thing is to keep everything out of the hive. When the bees are out and about, it’s a bit more of a fair fight! We have the wax moth (see the blog here http://www.beesinfrance.com/2010/wax-moths/) but no small hive beetle (yet) thankfully.
We have two large salvia bushes in our garden in the Vendee which have always been filled with honey or bumble bees from spring until September. This year their absence is total and the only visitors we have had to the bushes are one or two black bees. Our lavender has been very poor this year and I suspect it is to do with the lack of bees. I am pretty sure we don’t have a frelon nest in the garden but there have been plenty of them around this summer. Any suggestions as to how we encourage the bees back?
Hi Rosemary – it may well be the amount of frelons/hornets that are keeping the bees away, although there is also a decline in numbers. Do you know if they are Asian hornets as these are the ones that prey on bees and they are now in the Vendee.You can tell the Asian hornets by their yellow legs and they have blacker abdomens(check out the photos on the Asian hornet pages).If you watch them, they may lead you in direction of the nest which would need to be destroyed. I was talking to a Asian hornet exterminator in the Vendee only a few days ago in fact, and the good news is that in the Vendee their removal is subsidised by the regional government. Good luck in finding the source of the problem.