Wasps

Spotted some wasps flying near the hive today, and a dead one on the floor in front of  them. Wasps are happy to steal honey from a hive, being carnivorous they'll probably happily eat bees, steal eggs and larvae too. There's also some larger hornets will decimate a colony in next to no time but I don't think we have them in England yet thanks to our climate and the channel. Wasps are physically stronger than bees and in a one on one fight the smart money is on the wasp. However a healthy honey bee colony should be able to fight off a random wasp -albeit at the cost of a couple of bees, but enough wasps can overpower them and even kill off the whole colony. What beekeepers do to keep their bees safe from wasps is put out a wasp trap near the hive, although I've always wondered how many extra wasps are drawn toward the hive by the bait in the trap. There's other things you can do too like reduce the size of the hive entrance to make it easier for the bees to defend and not spill syrup and honey all over the place so the wasps aren't so attracted in the first place. I may put a small trap out there myself whilst hive2 is queenless but I'd rather not as wasps play their own part in our ecology. Whilst bees get their protein from pollen wasps get theirs from eating other insects and whatever bits of meat they can find. That makes them pretty useful around the garden as they eat the bugs that're dining on your plants, as well as pollinating them.

Vespula Vulgaris (I think)

Addendum (23/7/11) Turns out there's more wasps than usual this year to the point that the National Bee Unit (part of FERA) have published an advisory about wasps for beekeepers. coincidentally today after inspecting the hives I saw quite a few wasps and saw some attacking individual bees so I guess the common and german wasp does kill adult bees. I stood and watched for a while, killed six of them with a stick then made some small wasp traps.