Are German Hornets a Serious Bee Threat?

[jajtiii]

I have discovered a nest hornet a hundred or so yards from my two bee hives. Normally, these do not overly concern me and I take heart in the fact that they are feasting on the insects on my property.

Is there a known problem between bees and german hornets? I know that a hornet will eat the occasional bee. But, can it become more serious than that?

If it comes to between the bees and the hornets, the hornets will be dead before nightfall.

[ga.beeman]

at times they can eat alot of them and sometimes they dont. different location seem to be different. just keep at look out around the entrance of your hives and see how much you see them around them. Good Luck David

[afss]

not to be cold, by why wait.. hornets, IMO are evil little creatures and sooner or later you are likely to take a sting from one. I know as soon as i find a hornet wasp nest they die.

[Cedar Hill]

FWIW We had large yellow hornets (German Hornets ?) in 2005, constantly at the hive entrances, lopping off the heads of maybe hundreds of worker bees. Never had seen them before. Very difficult to eradicate the very large nest which was in a wall. They didn't die easily no matter what was used against them. Alive going into the winter but did not survive it. Not really vicious to humans but against the bees they were terrible to the point of affecting the honey crop. It may have been some exotic invasive species. One of the Boston newspapers had an article about them as they had invaded a Boston shipyard. OMTCW

[JohnBeeMan]

They were a bad problem for me last year. I did find the nest and burned them out - after attempting to use wasp spray and the gasoline to no avail. They would show up as I lifted the top covers and start picking off my girls.

Like all hornets only the queens overwinter so the nest are just about always in new locations.

This year I have only seen one large yellow hornet so far - and attempted to kill it.

A only good hornet is a dead hornet

[Jer733]

I put out homemade wasp and hornet traps in spring to get the queens.

I use a piece of a hot dog in soapy water.

A 2 gal milk jug with the top cut and then inverted into the bottom and taped on.

I put them all over as the plastic is free and it cuts back on the wasps we have (meat bees).

I have just started sprinkling meat with sevin dust (no trap) and let them take it back to the hive to kill the hive. Not much experience with that yet.