A couple of months ago I popped over to see a friend who was worried that her bees were being attacked by hornets. My first thought, given the recent Berkshire sighting, was to confirm that they were not Asian hornets. Apparently, she had been standing guard with a badminton racket, swatting them out of the sky before they could take down her bees.When I arrived, the front of the hive had a good cluster of bees bearding the entrance. After a few moments the next hornet appeared. We watched her (the hornet, not our beekeeper) as she moved in on the hive, but she just tentatively approached the cluster then drifted off to the side and past. There was a little defensive flutter across the cluster for a moment, but I noticed the stream of returning workers did not falter and the hornet did not take any notice of the flying bees.
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