Two days of intervention were necessary, but the nest, built on the edge of the territorial route 40commune of Bastelicaccia, could be destroyed this Friday evening. Inside, a colony of Asian hornets -or yellow-legged hornets-, a particularly harmful species originating from Asia. Corsica was until then the only department in France to have escaped this problem.
Because in fact, if the intervention was so quick, it is because the alert launched in the middle of the week by a neighboring beekeeper immediately worried all the island’s beekeepers. The insect is a formidable predator for bees, which he hunts and kills even in the hives in order to feed on them. And it was after discovering specimens of Asian hornets in one of them that the farmer warned the Beekeepers’ Health Defense Group.
To locate the nest, technicians from the Corsican Environment Office recovered a hornet from the beekeeper, proceeded to installing a radio transmitter and were thus able to follow the insect to its colony, housed in foliage a few hundred meters away. This device had been previously acquired by the OEC, beekeepers themselves have been preparing for several years for the almost inevitable arrival of the Asian hornet on the island.
Olivier Castel
Accompanied by two firefighters and an entomologist from the Corsican Environment Office, the beekeepers, in airtight combinationsprayed insecticide to get rid of hundreds of pests. The operation took place at nightfall, when the insects are bothered by the darkness and return to their dens.
The GDSA recommends the greatest vigilance, fearing that other nests may exist elsewhere. The network of sentinels of beekeepers of Corsica is mobilized and is encouraged to manufacture hornet trapsthe only way to easily detect the presence of the Asian cousin of the European hornet (see below).
Olivier Castel
