A Breton beekeeper has invented a clever trap to fight against the proliferation of Asian hornets which decimated his hives.
A technique that works and that he now hopes to extend to treat this problem other than with chemicals.
It is an ecological solution, and which could make children.
A Breton beekeeper has invented a clever trap to fight against the proliferation of Asian hornets, whose expansion has been terrifying since their arrival in France about fifteen years ago.
His target?
The most important of the insects: the queen.
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A tank with two ducts sized to the nearest hundredth of a millimeter
When 35 of his 100 bee hives were wiped out in a single year, this problem became an obsession for this beekeeper.
He then began to observe the hornets, and noticed that the queens regularly left the nests in the spring, to go and develop others ... And that in these periods of absence, the hornets did not manage to s 'organize and ended up leaving the area.
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The man therefore armed himself with a 3D printer and designed, with a team of students in plastics processing, a tank containing wax to serve as bait.
But the object is above all equipped with two conduits sized to the nearest hundredth of a millimeter, to capture only the queens of the hornets.
And it works: by attacking this single insect, the beekeeper has overcome the entire colony.
A company to export this new ecological trap
Since then, the bee breeder has started a business to export this trap, hoping to supplant the typical intervention methods of the authorities, based on chemicals extremely toxic to the surrounding flora and fauna.
A hope to overcome this so-called exogenous species, that is to say originating from another continent, and which, once displaced, wreaks havoc.