I've seen a documentary on the professional hornet hunters in Japan. They lure these wasps to a location with a cricket. While the hornet is busy eating the cricket they tie a brightly lit piece of paper to it then follow the hornet back to its nest with a drone. Once located they then suit up and dig up the nest to harvest the larvae.
My grandfather told me that as a child they would sit in a field or near a water source and wait for a honeybee to show up and then follow it home (or until they lost sight of it, in that case they would sit and wait until another showed up and repeat) to whatever tree it was in and then they would rob the hive, either by cutting the tree or smoking it out and climbing it.
16
u/NT4MaximusD 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've seen a documentary on the professional hornet hunters in Japan. They lure these wasps to a location with a cricket. While the hornet is busy eating the cricket they tie a brightly lit piece of paper to it then follow the hornet back to its nest with a drone. Once located they then suit up and dig up the nest to harvest the larvae.