France vs the Asian hornet

[gavin]

Mike Brown spoke at the bee farmers meeting a few weeks ago on his experiences in a village in France where beekeepers (often elderly!) were volunteering to go up very long turntable ladders in the dark to inject sulphurous fumes into Asian hornet nests. Desperate measures!

Here is a clip showing some of the things they are doing elsewhere. The 150 Euro fee for the elimination of each nest charged by professional exterminators is a bit steep, but this guy is developing an idea where you fire insecticide-laced paintballs into their nests from the safety of the ground. Worth a look, even if you don't follow the language:

http://www.francetvinfo.fr/animaux/l...re_853541.html

[Jon]

Hornet paintball sniper. Would make a good movie.

[gavin]

Next product line for the new Thorne catalogue.

If the older male beekeeper in Scotland generally drifted towards the gadgetry of the oxalic vapourisation process, can you imagine the rush to do paintballing out on the streets to 'save the bee'?

[busybeephilip]

Looks like fun, I can see an inter club activity event emerging here

[Feckless Drone]

[QUOTE=gavin;29535]Next product line for the new Thorne catalogue.
Given the tendencies of beekeepers to tinker and improvise then I have this vision of correx siege towers appearing and then the catalogues will be filled with bows and arrows, trebuchets and balistas under the Pests and Diseases section. The beginners classes will now include an afternoon on a firing range and Liam Neeson gets invite to be honorary president of SBA.

[Jon]

We could get teams from Bayer and Monsanto just to spice things up a bit.
Bayer would likely cheat by putting nerve gas in the paint balls.
Orkney BKA would never stand a chance!

[busybeephilip]

Maybe we could develop an PC version of Hornetcraft and get funding for this (for those that dont understand this see http://www.theguardian.com/technolog...orthern-island )

[greengumbo]

We could get teams from Bayer and Monsanto just to spice things up a bit.
Bayer would likely cheat by putting nerve gas in the paint balls.
Orkney BKA would never stand a chance!

Gavin would build his own "native" paintball device - firing laced porridge. Identifiable by measuring the morphometry of the gun handle.

[Jimbo]

I think we need to go a bit more high tech here
My idea would be to adapt one of these radio controlled drones with a camera and an insecticide gun mounted on it. Various attachments could then be developed eg a swarm catcher attachment for those inaccessible swarms we get called out for
Of course this would require funding. Can't decide whether to go for crowd funding or dragons den
Any suggestions for further development of the idea


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[greengumbo]

Actually for the asian hornet nests......that's not a bad idea Jim !