The invasive Vespa velutina has been widely referred as an effective predator of honeybees. Despite the potential risk to pollination services provision and honey production, there is no accurate quantification and assessment of its real consequences for honeybees. To date, the identification of the honeybee and other insects in the diet of V. velutina has been investigated by direct observation of adult foraging or examination of food pellets. To overcome these limitations, in this study we used a DNA metabarcoding approach to evaluate the usefulness of different types of sample (jaws and stomachs collected from workers and larval faecal pellets taken from the hornet comb) to investigate the predation of V. velutina upon honeybees, and potentially on other insects. Honeybee DNA was identified in all types of samples, but larval faecal pellets retrieved the higher number of reads of honeybee DNA and the largest diversity at all taxonomic levels. Over all samples we could identify 4 orders, 9 families, 6 genera and 1 species of prey. We estimate that collecting 6 workers is sufficient to identify honeybee predation by a colony using worker’s jaws. Stomachs were the least useful sample type to detect honeybee DNA. The presence of honeybee DNA in all analysed colonies irrespective of collection site, and the variety of insect orders detected in the diet support current concerns over the acknowledged negative impact of V. velutina on managed honeybees and its potential threat to pollination services provision.

侵入性的Vespa velutina被广泛认为是蜜蜂的有效捕食者。尽管授粉服务提供和蜂蜜生产存在潜在风险，但没有准确量化和评估其对蜜蜂的实际影响。迄今为止，已通过直接观察成虫觅食或检查食物颗粒来鉴定V. velutina饮食中的蜜蜂和其他昆虫。为了克服这些限制，在这项研究中，我们使用了 DNA 元条形码方法来评估不同类型样本（从工人收集的下巴和胃以及从大黄蜂蜂巢中取出的幼虫粪便）来研究V. velutina捕食的有用性在蜜蜂身上，并可能在其他昆虫身上。在所有类型的样本中都鉴定了蜜蜂 DNA，但幼虫粪便颗粒检索到的蜜蜂 DNA 读数数量更多，并且在所有分类学水平上具有最大的多样性。在所有样本中，我们可以识别出 4 目、9 科、6 属和 1 种猎物。我们估计收集 6 名工人足以使用工人的下颚识别蜂群捕食蜜蜂。胃是检测蜜蜂 DNA 最不实用的样本类型。无论采集地点如何，所有分析的蜂群中都存在蜜蜂 DNA，并且在饮食中检测到的昆虫命令的多样性支持当前对V. velutina对受管理蜜蜂的公认负面影响及其对授粉服务提供的潜在威胁的担忧。