"have you tried an entrance reducer with individual bee sized holes drilled" It sort of helps and sort of does not. Yes, you can reduce the entrance and yes that makes it easy to defend but ... it also restricts the bees since an active colony needs more access. But .. there is also another view ... When you have only one or two hornets they come round and take bees that are leaving the hive (not normally bees returning to the hive) and you can live with that. But the behaviour changes as the season progresses. Both the hornets and bees change. The hornets start working together and the number of hornets increases so that there are say ten or more present at any time. The bees change .. they are extremely reluctant to leave the hive. The hornets camp out day after day after day waiting. Eventually the bees must leave. Then it is breakfast, lunch and dinner all at once. A reduced entrance is a defence but it is not a solution. The solution is to either kill hornet nest(s) or it is to trap the hornets (since if the hornets are trapped other hornets do not find the marking pheromones used by the hornets (have to be kept fresh) and so have to discover the location of the bee hive again. *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm