VietNamNet Bridge – For the last two weeks, a “campaign” to hunt hornets to sell to China has boomed in Hamlet 10 in Dai Nai ward of the central province of Ha Tinh.

The tool to catch hornets.

Hornets – which do not have high economic value but are very useful for plants – are being seriously threatened in Ha Tinh.

Local people do not understand the value of hornets. They only know that someone are willing to buy hornets and they are guided how to catch the insects. They equip themselves with butterfly rackets to catch hornets, to sell to a local man named Tuan.

A young man said on his lucky days, he could earn up to VND500,000 ($25,000) within several hours

VietNamNet’s correspondents visited Tuan at his home and saw his wife, Ms. Que, was scooping up dried hornets into a big sack and put the sack on a scale. Que said each sack is 10 kilos and dried hornets are sold to a trader in the northern port city of Hai Phong.

Drying hornets.

Tuan said hornets must be killed and dried under the sun for three days. One kilo of living hornets is VND500,000 and VND1 million for one kilo of dried hornets.

According to Tuan, around one month ago, his acquaintance from Hai Phong and a strange man visited him and taught him how to process hornet bait.

They also introduced a set of hornet catching and processing tools, including an oil stove, a round piece of iron, a butterfly racket and bait, which is scented like pollen, and instructed Tuan how to catch hornets.

They brought the tools to the field, mixed bait with sugar then put the bait on the round piece of iron and heat the bait by the oil stove. Smoke from the bait-sugar mixture was sweet-smelling, attracting hornets. They could use butterfly rackets to catch hornets very easily.

Dry hornets are packed to transport to Hai Phong.

Local people learned the trick from Tuan. They went to the field in the morning to catch hornets to sell to Tuan, who transported dried hornets to Hai Phong to sell to a big trader there. From Hai Phong, hornets were sold to China.

“We know that hornets are useful for crops but they suddenly become valuable so people catch them to sell for money. People in other communes also learn bee-catching method,” Ms. Que said.

When VietNamNet’s correspondents tell him about the fact, Dai Nai ward chairman Nguyen Xuan Huong was surprised. “This species of bee is useful. We can see several hornets in gardens but they can catch tens of kilos of hornets. It is abnormal. We will check and deal with this,” he said.

Bait is heated up by oil stove.

The bait

Dam De