Beekeeper Peter Down tells of Asian hornet devastation

Peter Down talks about the devastation left behind following an Asian hornet invasion at his apiary in Capel-le-Ferne

Transcript

00:00 So we have an apiary up here in Capel de Ferne and it's a fairly big sized apiary.

00:08 We was pushing over 20 hives coming into the season and obviously we've had a massive reduction.

00:15 Counting today it's looking between 14 and 16 that we're actually going to have lost

00:19 and watching this morning I've noticed a lot more hulking happening and they're actually

00:25 picking on one of my stronger hives this morning so that may deplete over the next 48 hours.

00:30 We've got traps up, we've got what we class as a kill trap that we use and we drill 6mm

00:39 holes into ours to try and allow all other species out.

00:44 We are also trialling a new one from France at the moment which is going to be more ecological

00:53 so it doesn't trap the European Hornet and it doesn't trap wasps and everything else

00:59 so the only thing it's based on is to get the Asian Hornet or the Yellow Legged Asian

01:05 Hornet away from us.

01:06 On one of our stations actually on our apiary itself we had one Asian Hornet up on there

01:14 and we've then come down to some of our other traps that we have set up along the cliff

01:19 tops.

01:21 In the first one we had two Asian Hornets this morning and in the third one we had three

01:29 Asian Hornets.

01:30 The National Bee Unit have done a destruction, three destructions down in the bottom of the

01:36 cliffs which means that we shouldn't now five days later be seeing any signs of any Asian

01:41 Hornets on us at all but we clearly have Asian Hornets.

01:47 Devastation for me is suffering with mental health.

01:50 My bees are my way out of my mental health.

01:53 They help me absolutely massively and people don't actually sometimes realise the therapy

01:58 that comes from them.

02:00 To actually watch going from twenty odd hives down to what I have now and physically watching

02:06 Asian Hornets coming in, hawking my bees, grabbing them and flying off with them and

02:12 leaving my bees in distress isn't for me something that I really want to watch but

02:17 I don't know any other way forward unless we can try and rectify and get on top of it

02:23 now but that means that the National Bee Unit and DEFRA need to work with the AHAT and the

02:29 beekeepers in the local areas.

02:31 This year we've lost our honey production because obviously our bees are so stressed

02:36 they're not producing the honey that they need to which means in some ways they're not

02:40 producing the stores that they need for the winter to survive the winter, letting them

02:44 give us any honey to then sell.

02:46 Our honey production is quite big every year and that pays for our winter feed and for

02:54 keeping our bees going because it is a costly enterprise.

03:00 Keeping bees isn't as cheap as what some people may think that it is in the long run.