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With the transmitter, the biologists hoped to know the location of the insect nest. The Asian hornet has no place in the Netherlands and must therefore be fought. But things turned out a little differently when the unfortunate hornet stumbled upon a chicken. Two other tagged wasps were also unable to lead the searchers to the nest. They could not support the weight of the transmitter.
The hornets were first spotted by Annemarie Kaptein from Overijssel. She found the critters in her garden and then rang the bell. “I’m not an expert on wasps but I knew about the common European hornet and it was much darker and had yellow legs, the European doesn’t have that. Then I started searching the internet to find out what that was.”
This is how Kaptein discovered that it was probably the Asian hornet, and that the European Union would rather get rid of these critters than get rich. “I didn’t know it, but I found out via the internet that there was a call to report the animals. Then I did and within days EIS researchers were in the garden.”
Using transmitters on the wasps, the researchers then tried to find out where the animals’ nests were. But it still didn’t quite work out.
Spatial behavior
“Animals are sent to study their spatial behavior,” says behavioral biology professor Marc Naguib. “You can’t always track an animal with binoculars, and with a transmitter it’s always possible to analyze the movement of the animal.”
“We do this, for example, with turtles, storks and other birds,” continues Naguib. “This way we can find out how big their territory is, how often the animals meet, where they pass and how the migration routes pass.”
According to Naguib, it is important that the animals are not disturbed. “That’s why there are rules that transmitters must follow, for example on the weight of the transmitter, the animal species for which the transmitter can be used and under what circumstances.”
Naguib herself has good experiences with bird transmitters. “For example, I analyzed the breeding season of nightingales and great tits in the Netherlands with transmitters and on Monday I will go to Australia to broadcast zebra finches.”
few problems
“It’s almost never wrong, according to studies,” continues Naguib. “There are very few situations where transmitters cause trouble and that’s because there are such strict rules. I’ve seen few negative effects.”
Still, the researchers were unable to locate the hornet’s nest with their technological tools. In the end, it was Kaptein himself who managed to trace the nest with the naked eye after the researchers descended.
“I did it the old-fashioned way,” Kaptein explains. “I caught and tagged a wasp with the biologist stuff. Then I continued to follow that wasp and saw that it was still back to the bait point within a minute and a half. That way , I knew the nest had to be close.”
23 meters high
And that turned out to be true, because the wasps were less than thirty meters away – only 23 meters high. “It’s weird. They were five feet under the treetops. The nest was half a meter.”
The nest in the garden has since been removed and in a few days it will be known if all the hornets are indeed gone. The hungry chicken, named Eddy, is doing well.
