By Delayna Earley
The Island News
Camp Arnold, owner of Beaufort Bees, said he is not too concerned about his bees being affected by the discovery of a yellow-legged hornet – an invasive species of hornet known to be harmful to honeybees – but that may change as they discover more information about how many are here.
Beaufort Bees is a humane honeybee removal and relocation company that also harvests honey to sell at the local farmers market, Arnold said.
Ben Powell with Clemson University contacted Camp, to let him know that a yellow-legged hornet had been located just outside of Savannah.
“They haven’t located a nest at this time,” Arnold said. “But anytime we have something that we don’t have here, it’s worrisome because apparently they do like to go after honeybees, and they are pretty effective at causing a lot of trouble for the honeybees.”
At this point though, Arnold said he has just seen a lot of people sharing the articles and information on social media, but to his knowledge, they had only found one specimen of the hornet and not a whole nest.
If there is a nest though, Arnold worries about how it would be possible to contain something of that nature.
“If you find one nest there is probably another nest,” said Arnold. “You know, it is worrisome, but right now I’m not at the point of freaking out and trying to save my bees.”
He did say that this invasive species is common in Europe and has proven to be an issue for them, according to several beekeepers that he follows from overseas on Instagram.
The beekeepers that he follows on social media have traps and different methods of trying to bait, catch and kill the invasive species of hornet, but thankfully, he said, we don’t appear to be in that situation quite yet.
Delayna Earley lives in Beaufort with her husband, two children and Jack Russell. She formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She joined The Island News in 2022. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
