arrrgh wasps - help!

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shrekfeet

New Bee
Joined
Jan 4, 2011
Messages
56
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Location
Hampshire
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
1
have had a nightmare summer. 3 colonies down to final 1. hope to get this through the winter but is now being robbed by wasps. Have restricted the entrance, also fitted a device to create a long passage into entrance but they are still going in. what can I do otherwise I will have no chnce of getting this small colony through the winter!

Help please
 
If you can't move the colony, then keep them in for 3 days. Wasps might get board after a couple, plus gives the hive some breathign space as it sounds like they have given up. If they are light you may need to feed them to replace stores robbed out.

I've found the Api Var Life has helped, as there are 20 / 30 bees outside the entrance block ready to pounce on any wasps that try getting in.
 
You need to observe carefully. Are the wasps carrying away your bees or their larvae from the hive or are they going after the honey/sweet food?
 
I think they are just taking the food. They did this to another hive and when I inspected the bees just looked really dopy and inactive in the end. Can I just block the entrance for 3 days and hope they go away? Hopefully we'll get a sharp frost to kill them off
 
or should I fasten it all up and move it half a mile away and hope that the wasps bugger off and bother someone else?
 
4 wasp traps all around same hive- one on each corner... plastic milk bottle, dark tape over bottom half- and make a 1" letter box flap just above the dark area. Put 3" of jammy water in bottle, smear jam under lid and under flap- they will prefer that to the hive..
This method certainly hammered wasps that were plaguing one of my colonies.
 
Having the same problem. I put jammy, sugary water in jam jars on the affected hive, the bees ignored it but the wasps soon started to drown in it. Then I gradually moved the jars away from the hives. Helped reduce wasps in the hives by about half. So far no bees only wasps in there.
 
i have tried the jars and it has captured some wasps but they are really getting a hold. Other than the jammy jars or moving the hive or a sheet of glass, what else can I do? Is it feasable to block the bees in for a few days and use the jam jars that I can then move away from the hive gradually?
 
i have tried the jars and it has captured some wasps but they are really getting a hold. Other than the jammy jars or moving the hive or a sheet of glass, what else can I do? Is it feasable to block the bees in for a few days and use the jam jars that I can then move away from the hive gradually?

If you wish to sort this problem out then you need to be confident about whether the wasps are going for meat (i.e. your bees and their larvae) or sugar.

If the wasps are going for sugar then setting traps after they have found food within the hives won't help because wasps are programmed to pin point navigate back to a discovered food source to the exclusion of other foods. All your traps are doing is attracting different wasps to the wasps that are attacking your hive and therefore are increasing the number of nuisance wasps in the vicinity of your hive.

To be successful you have to interrupt programmed feeding behaviour and deploy high efficiency traps to eliminate the programme feeding wasps. To do this you need to move the hive a short distance and place the high efficiency trap(s) in the exact same position where the entrance to the hive was before it was moved (to the millimeter). Low efficiency traps are unlikely to resolve the problem properly. Nearly all the beeks that I know that have had their hives robbed out were using low efficiency (home made traps) at the time.

Best of luck, I hope you catch the problem in time.
 
To do this you need to move the hive a short distance and place the high efficiency trap(s) in the exact same position where the entrance to the hive was before it was moved (to the millimeter).

Sounds like a precision operation this wasp catching, will being one millimeter out make the trap useless or just not very efficient.?
 
thanks for the advice. All i need to know now is exactly what high efficency hives are!
 
Millimetre precision when wasps are mass feeding is not needed. Wasps can detect sweet foods much better than we can. Have you ever smelt the scent of honey coming from a beehive?
I attended a job a couple of weeks ago where there had been a wedding/party and there was one bin liner of food rubbish left in the middle of a field. Completely covered in wasps dead and alive, you couldn’t get near it without being suited. I knocked down all live wasps and dragged the bag away from the area and was followed by returning wasps half way up the field. So that goes to show that they can detect scent very accurately.
I would suggest that you move the hive following the 3 mile rule and narrow the entrance right down after moving to give them the best chance of recovery. Forget wasp traps!
 
Sounds like a precision operation this wasp catching, will being one millimeter out make the trap useless or just not very efficient.?

It is a precision operation but it does depend on the nature of the food source. Food sources can be static or mobile and wasps employ navigational strategies accordingly. With static food sources (such as those found in a hive) wasps will return to within millimeters of the exact food source. Where the food source is mobile, for example people attending an outdoor display at a zoo, where those people have sweet foods but the locations of those foods is constantly roving within the display arena, then wasps will employ terrain navigation. Wasps will terrain navigate through flower beds for example because the position of blooms is contantly moving albeit within the defined flower bed.

It's not a question of the trap being useless or less efficient. It's understanding that wasps are programmed to ignore the trap if they have found and are already programme feeding on that original food source. To catch such wasps requires removing the original food source to break the programmed feeding behaviour to encourage the wasps to start looking for an alternative food source. Placing the trap in the exact location of the original food source means that the wasps won't have that far to go and so more of them are caught and eradicated (before they disperse) and if it's done properly then virtually 100% of those programme feeding wasps can be eradicated (rather than displaced to be a problem closeby elsewhere).

When it comes to wasp traps, efficiency and effectiveness are frequently confused. Efficiency is the proportion of wasps caught that are killed. High efficiency traps don't allow any wasps to escape and so prevent 'wasp recruitment' and therefore by definition will kill far fewer wasps but importantly, the traps themselves don't contribute to the problem. Low efficiency traps kill far more wasps but they still 'recruit' more wasps than they kill.

Effectiveness on the other hand is how good a wasp trap is at getting rid of the wasp problem. Unfortunately, effectiveness is the product of a multitude of factors which go well beyond the trap itself. The best way I have of describing it is to draw a parallel with a builders trowel. If a lay person buys a trowel should they expect to be able to build a house? The answer is no, of course not, and yet physically the trowel is arguably more simple in design than a wasp trap!

All of which means that people who use high efficiency wasp traps without understanding what they are doing won't necessarily get effective results (and so blame the trap) and those people who use low efficiency traps invariably don't measure effectiveness in terms of getting rid of a wasp problem (i.e. ending up with little or no wasps) they look for a busy trap that has killed lots of wasps as the measure of effectiveness (all the while still being plagued by wasps).

I know this may sound counter-intuitive but what's the purpose of a wasp trap? It isn't to catch wasps! It's to get rid of wasps and that's an entirely different proposition.
 
It is a precision operation but it does depend on the nature of the food source. Food sources can be static or mobile and wasps employ navigational strategies accordingly. With static food sources (such as those found in a hive) wasps will return to within millimeters of the exact food source. Where the food source is mobile, for example people attending an outdoor display at a zoo, where those people have sweet foods but the locations of those foods is constantly roving within the display arena, then wasps will employ terrain navigation.

Thats the funniest thing i have ever heard, so what your saying is, if the food source stays still, the wasps will navigate thier way to it, but if it moves they will follow it?

Umm, isnt that what most mobile creatures do? :rolleyes:
 
Thats the funniest thing i have ever heard, so what your saying is, if the food source stays still, the wasps will navigate thier way to it, but if it moves they will follow it?

Umm, isnt that what most mobile creatures do? :rolleyes:

I'm glad you find it amusing. Meanwhile beeks are losing their hives.

I will try to clarify the concept for you. Wasps work together in teams from the same nest. So when one wasp finds a static food source it flies back to its nest and communicates the location of that food source (to the millimeter) to its colleagues who then fly exactly to that food source. Together they will keep returning to that same food source until it is gone. In terms of a hive if that food source is consumed by wasps it generally means the end of the hive.

Terrain navigation is more sophisticated than just catching hold of a scent. It's about wasps having memory, i.e. coming back to specific terrains that wasps have learned that there are food sources within the confines of the terrain.

OK, so Shrekfeet moves their hive three miles. What's to stop the problem from starting up there only with different wasps? Knock down spray? Hmmmmm! Another three mile hike? Hmmmmmm!
 
could you shut up the hive and move it a few feet for a few days, place a new hive on the old spot with some jam inside it and place a false floor in it covered in sticky rat and mouse glue...

all the wasps that know about it bound to get caught in it after a day you'd think.


Darren
 
Hmmmm you’re not convincing me there with yet again another theory Karol. Unless you’re referring to the theory that creatures seek out and find food? By the way, that theory isn’t original and most people have heard about it.
So wasps find a source of food and return, in the case of a hive that doesn’t move, they miraculously end up at the entrance? Strange that isn’t it… Doh!
If that same hive is moved 3 foot away, these wasps are stuffed? Can’t find or scent the source of honey which is very apparent to even us mere humans. C’mon, even I could find a hive blindfolded when it’s really chuffing out honey scent.
I am in awe that you have discovered a new behaviour of a common insect that tracks down it food by sophisticated means! I suppose a good nose or eyes doesn’t qualify as sophisticated?
 

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