Food leftovers left by cat feeders are food sources for hornets and their multiplication is a cause of concern as their presence is a threat to the typical Maltese bee, Bee Savers Malta says.

Bee Savers Malta is an environmental conservation organisation that is “working to preserve the bee population by capturing swarms to redirect them into the wild”.

In comments to The Malta Independent on Sunday, one of the founders, Antoine Galea, said that cat feeders should stay in the vicinity of the stray cats they feed until the animals leave. This would enable the feeders to remove any leftover food which then attracts hornets.

He said that “this might be impractical simply because cats don’t eat everything all at once”. But it has been noticed that leftover food is an attraction to hornets which, in turn, are multiplying and causing havoc among the bee population.

Apart from feeding on leftovers, hornets are a primary pest to honey bees, including the Maltese bee, attacking bee colonies to obtain honey and animal proteins to feed their young, resulting in destroying Maltese bees and threatening their survival.

Last year, many people expressed their concern online as they saw a new type of hornet emerge locally, one that was causing devastation among the bee population.

In his explanation, Galea said that over the last few years oriental hornets have made their presence known through their ever-increasing population and their reproduction rate is helped because they are finding food easily.

In October of last year, in reply to a question made in Parliament by PN MP Jerome Caruana Cilia, Agriculture Minister Anton Refalo said that his ministry is consulting experts with the aim of controlling the oriental hornets’ population.

Back then he had said that “we (the agriculture ministry) are in active discussions with experts who said that the whole Mediterranean, from Greece to Morocco, has and is experiencing an increase in wasp population.

“I am sure that there are more modern ways how to locate oriental hornet nests,” he had said.

In his explanation Galea said that there are micro locators made for the purpose to locate nests.

Galea added that amateur pest controllers tend to kill such nests during the day, “when in reality this should be done during the night”.

He said that “when the extermination procedure is done during the day, this creates more nests as the hornets roam during the day, so they would not be collectively killed. Galea added that ultimately the best way to ensure mass extermination of a nest is to do it during the night, since all hornets get together to rest”.

“The current day extermination procedure produces even more hornet nests in the same neighbourhood,” he said.

Galea said that the ever-increasing oriental hornet population is threatening the population of the traditional “Maltese” bee.

He explained that when the NGO carries out rescues of bee swarms, only one in 30 of said bees is found to be the typical Maltese bee, which means that the population of the traditional Maltese bee is sharply in decline, while the number of hybrid bees is on the rise.

 “Since the start, Maltese have detested their own products and thus have always imported from foreign countries, because they think that products coming from foreign countries are better,” he said.

Galea explained how back in the 1980s when there was a bee shortage on a large scale, Maltese were importing them from foreign countries like New Zealand “instead of cultivating the Maltese one”.

He added that on another occasion, during another period of time when another shortage was noticed, bee colonies were being imported from Italy.

Asked how the government can help to promote the Maltese bee population to flourish, Galea suggested that in unused government land plants, such as the French Honeysuckle (Sulla coronaria), are made available. “This is a flower that is extremely beneficial to bees,” he said.

The bee expert said that bees coming from the Apis family, which is the same family from which the typical Maltese bees come, have pollen and nectar as their main food source.

“A bee needs to go around 1,000 flowers to produce a tablespoon of honey,” he said, adding that the amount of flowers available for bees has drastically gone down in the past years.

Additionally the French Honeysuckle self-seeds “meaning that it needs to be planted only once”. It is also a nitrogen fixer, which will be very beneficial to the soil in which it is planted.

On the same note, Galea is also urging farmers who plant trees to maybe go for “bee-pollinated trees” so that they can also serve as a source of food for bees.

There was some good news for beekeepers last Wednesday when the government launched a new financial aid scheme to help them buy equipment to catch queen oriental hornets and repopulate the local bee population.

Announcing the scheme, Agriculture Minister Refalo said that it will work alongside an information campaign on oriental hornets.

Through this aid, Refalo said the sector will be able to invest in equipment to control the population of this insect while starting the process to repopulate the Maltese bee, given that hornets have left a negative impact.

The scheme will be open to registered beekeepers, who will be receiving an application to join.

The idea is for beekeepers to buy equipment that is needed to catch the queen hornets with the aim of bringing down the population of this species.

An information campaign will be launched in the coming weeks for people to be encouraged to take the necessary steps to control the hornet population.