Bad Year For Jaspers

[drex]

Any boxes stored in my shed get a sheet of ply top and bottom and ratchet straps. Never a problem with stray bees or wasps.

 

[Beefriendly]

You’re lucky the bees didn’t find it. You’d have more than 50

Its an interesting phenomena...got the same as Millet, my garage (full of stored wet frames in supers, buckets full of capping wax etc etc) is full of wasps but nary a bee. The only entrances are at the bottom of the sliding doors where there is a small gap......different story if I open the doors... Seems wasp are capable of entering gaps at ground level where bees don't seem to venture.
But once Mr Jasper is in they aren't clever enough to find their way back out so it's Mr. Vax for them as they collect on the windows.

 

[Erichalfbee]

ITLD has a video oh his Twitter feed of his extraction room. He keeps his hives well away from home but he has a neighbour who has moved some hives nearby. The doors are mobbed.

 

[Millet]

You’re lucky the bees didn’t find it. You’d have more than 50

They did but could not find there way out to tell there mates otherwise I know where you are coming from..

 

[XYZ]

Having no end of bother. I thought taking out the nest in the neighbour's garden would have some sort of impact but no difference, still terrorising my colonies.

Got two stings during an inspection the other day, one was deffo a bee, stinger was left in and resulted in a mark. Not really been much of an issue since. the other I'm thinking was a wasp - no mark, finger didn't swell but was very warm for a couple days... Weird...
I'm putting the bee sting down to these wasps causing my bees so much stress.

 

[Karol]

The wasp pressure is only set to increase.

Don't be tempted to squish any wasps on your hives. It's counter productive. Doing so stimulates the dying wasps to flood the hive with alarm pheromone which could very quickly precipitate what I term frenzied feeding.

Wasps progress through three basic feeding stages at the hive. The first is where scouting wasps probe a hive for weakness. Provided the hive is well looked after hygienically, has long tunnel entrances and is sufficiently strong, and you don't use low efficiency wasp traps (bought or home made) then the hive should be able to keep these scouting wasps at bay. The important thing here is that these scouting wasps don't get to feed at the hive.

The second stage is where scouting wasps get access and feed on the hive. Under such circumstances the scouting wasps go back to their nests and recruit their nest mates to the hive. Wasps are excellent navigators and will navigate exactly back to the location of the food source (within millimetres). This sets up conditions for 'swarm' feeding which becomes 'programmed', i.e. the wasps will ignore all other food sources until the found food source is consumed or becomes unavailable for some reason. During swarm feeding navigation is by mental map of landmarks and recruitment is by direct communication between nest mates.

The second phase may progress to the third and more critical stage which occurs when wasps engage in mortal combat with the defending honeybees and in so doing start releasing alarm/distress pheromones. At this point the alarm pheromones act as an overriding draw attracting all wasps that come across the scent trail. Navigation is no longer by mental map but is instead by scent. The significance of this is that the remedial actions taken to save hives during frenzied attack are more intensive than those required to save hives under swarm feeding attack. For example, simply moving the hive will no longer work because of the alarm pheromone signature travelling with the affected hive.

 

[Helen]

A wasp landed on the top of a brood frame whilst I was checking the colony today.



Bees instantly jumped on it, and dragged it down swiftly into the dark nether reaches of the hive. Doubt that one would come out again.


Tunnel entrances on hives and nucs put in place today.

 

[Show me the honey]

I’m eating my words here from previous posts earlier in the season! I have i hive under a willow tree. From what I have researched I believe that the tree has some form of aphid infestation which causes the tree to secrete a liquid that is now dripping onto the ground and bushes and the hive, which has caused a feeding frenzy wasps flies and all types of insects all other the place the hive has gone into high alert and I got more stings today than I have in 2 years from that hive!

Moved hive now so hopefully better next visit

 

[Millet]

Fettled them..I know honey in traps is a no no but the bees can not find a way into the shed now and honey is what the wasps wanted so that is what they got and it worked a treat..the trap is now half full with the little pests.

 

[masterBK]

Biological control of wasps

 

[Beefriendly]

They did but could not find there way out to tell there mates

Social recruitment in wasps to food sources is very poor. There is some low level recruitment as a few recent papers allude to but nothing in the same league as bee recruitment to a food source. No fancy communication dances etc , a bit of drumming and excitement
Its tempting as a beekeeper to assume wasps have the same mechanisms as bees for communicating where food sources are, but most of the literature suggest they don't. Most wasp find food sources by scent (wind), random and seeing other wasps feeding. As Karol rightly says they do have excellent navigational skills to return to a known food source, but only after they have chanced upon it.
A good read is a review paper on foraging in wasps that can be found here.
Click on here.....

 

[Millet]

Social recruitment in wasps to food sources is very poor. There is some low level recruitment as a few recent papers allude to but nothing in the same league as bee recruitment to a food source. No fancy communication dances etc , a bit of drumming and excitement
Its tempting as a beekeeper to assume wasps have the same mechanisms as bees for communicating where food sources are, but most of the literature suggest they don't. Most wasp find food sources by scent (wind), random and seeing other wasps feeding. As Karol rightly says they do have excellent navigational skills to return to a known food source.
A good read is a review paper on foraging in wasps that can be found here.
Click on here.....

Had a quick read of that N and to me it has got to be a smell thing from experience..for example one instance of many..
I moved several supers full of honey from the hives on my bee wheel barrow..within minutes of taking the supers into the cottage the bee barrow was swarming with wasps on a bit of dribbled honey..i moved the bee barrow 15 mins later 20 yards away and within two minutes it was swarming with wasps again so i blasted it with the hose pipe and the wasps disappeared after around 10 mins..none returned..
Today i hung a carry bag of washed wax capping's on the fence to drip dry..within 2 mins again it was covered with wasps so i took it down and put it in my car..the wasps vanished pretty quickly..so to me they can not tell their mates where the food source is or they would keep coming long after the food source was removed..i could go on but we know the score..

 

[Millet]

Biological control of wasps

Many spiders do not like to tackle wasps or bees but them big garden spiders and house spiders have more gut's..

 

[Millet]

A wasp landed on the top of a brood frame whilst I was checking the colony today.



Bees instantly jumped on it, and dragged it down swiftly into the dark nether reaches of the hive. Doubt that one would come out again.


Tunnel entrances on hives and nucs put in place today.

Tunnel entrances are very good..here is two pictures of tunnel entrances and one under floor entrance floor..the under floor entrance takes a lot of bees to defend where as the tunnels take less bees and make it impossible for wasps and robbing..these pictures where took today during wasp activity and interest around the hives..note the less guards on the tunnels and both are strong..the under floor entrance hive is half the strength.

 

[Karol]

Social recruitment in wasps to food sources is very poor.

I think this is where we'll have to agree to disagree. One of the things that I learned very early on when I entered this field (serendipity is a mysterious force to be sure) was just how little anyone understood about wasps. Much of the published science is based on simple assumptions that don't reflect the true complexities of these highly sophisticated insects. One of those complexities is the difference between the hunting phase and the sweet foraging phase and the impact it has on foraging/scouting behaviour. During the hunting phase wasps are primarily hunting as individuals because their prey is typically other insects which represent transient point source of food so that there is little if anything to recruit to. Contrast to this is protein scavenging on a carcass where there is a residual rich static food source and recruitment quickly results in swarming on the carcass. With sweet scavenging the ratio between point source foods for example flower heads and residual rich static food sources such as fallen fruit favours residual food sources so there is greater recruitment during this phase. BUT, and this is a big but, it is important to realise that during the sweet feeding phase when there is no longer any food within the nest for the adults, the adults spend longer intervals away from the nest feeding meaning there is less interaction between nest mates so recruitment may be slower. The determinant here is the availability of sweet food sources. The less availability the faster the recruitment and vice versa.

This paper is an interesting read:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0152080

It certainly contradicts much of the earlier published papers.

There is some low level recruitment as a few recent papers allude to but nothing in the same league as bee recruitment to a food source. No fancy communication dances etc ,

Again, this is where we'll have to agree to disagree. Having studied wasp behaviour in detail in the field for a couple decades (as opposed to just reading about them) I have observed both communication by means of wing vibration and communication by semaphore (characteristic exuberant gesticulation and flicking of legs).

I think to compare recruitment by bees with that of wasps is a bit of a non starter because they are very different beasts. Honeybees are vegetarians with comparatively low rewards and therefore have to work in high volumes. Wasps on the other hand are predators so their recruitment strategies reflect variable quality food sources. that is not the same as saying their ability to recruit is poor - far from it IMHO. I think there is a high level of discrimination which results in a highly complex and sophisticated modality of recruitment.

a bit of drumming and excitement

It was thought that gastral drumming was a sign of hunger but that has now been disproved and it has been shown to be a mode of nest based communication during recruitment which ties in with the paper cited above.

Its tempting as a beekeeper to assume wasps have the same mechanisms as bees for communicating where food sources are, but most of the literature suggest they don't.

I understand the temptation to compare the two but wasps and bees are very different so perhaps a better way is to contrast the two respecting their two very different food sources.

Most wasp find food sources by scent (wind), random and seeing other wasps feeding.

I agree with this statement so far as it relates to scouting wasps. As the paper above demonstrates this does not hold true once the scouts find and communicate the food source back to the nest.

As Karol rightly says they do have excellent navigational skills to return to a known food source, but only after they have chanced upon it.

Agreed - but that is the essence of the strategy behind their scouting behaviour - profiting from such chance encounters by increasing the rate of serendipity.

A good read is a review paper on foraging in wasps that can be found here.
Click on here.....

The paper by Lozada et al corroborates and expands on the work done by Overmyer and Jeanne which demonstrated nest based recruitment in germanica. Things have moved on since 2000 and I'm confident that with the noticeable increase in appreciation of wasps (in wider society) there will be more work done to understand these fascinating and important insects which personally I believe are a better sentinel species for an insight into the health of our environment.

 

[masterBK]

Some bees are too quick for a wasp

 

[Angularity]

Does anyone have any clues how to find a wasp nest? I can't see any common direction of flight from the ones that are plaguing me at the moment.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Does anyone have any clues how to find a wasp nest? I can't see any common direction of flight from the ones that are plaguing me at the moment.

You could always catch and mark the way the Jersey beekeepers track velutina ?

 

[Beefriendly]

Catch some live ones and place in fridge until motionless, quickly tie a 3 inch piece of white thread around abdomen (wear gloves and be careful of them "waking up"). Put one outside and as it warms up and flies home.... follow the very visible white thread. When you have lost sight of that one then release another etc. Apparently it's quite a common way to find nests in Japan and other countries.

 

[Karol]

Does anyone have any clues how to find a wasp nest? I can't see any common direction of flight from the ones that are plaguing me at the moment.

Unless the nest is in the immediate vicinity then I would suggest that trying to find nests is a lost cause. Depending on local topography and availability of food sources there can be as many as 1000 wasp nests per square mile (and obviously a lot less if you're surrounded by large monoculture fields with few hedgerows) and wasps can fly up to two miles to find food (albeit they tend to stay within 500m of their nest). The upshot being that you could have top end anything up to 12,500 wasp nests within a 2 mile radius contributing wasps to your problem with a more realistic figure of 90 nests within a 1/2 kilometre radius.

Your best bet I would suggest is reducing your background population of wasps in the vicinity of your hives through integrated wasp management techniques.