Beginners !!! Wasp management

[Millet]

Just been to look at my hives & saw a wasp coming out & flying off with half a bee, bit of a sad sight. I've had them around all week, not in big numbers. The hive is a newly transferred nuc, I have the entrance at a minimum and a acetate film curved over the front, along with a newly placed waspbane trap.
On the plus side I have found a wasp nest under my neighbours roof tiles, 50 yards from the hives, so I have been up the ladder & puffed under the tiles with wasp killer, I will put some more down tomorrow.
The powder was placed right were they enter, I lifted the tile to give that area a good blast. Does anyone know if the powder has to go right on the nest, or do they pick it up like food? Or track it back? The powder is called Zero In, from Amazon.
Thanks Nick

The wasps will walk the powder into the nest ,the wasps that do not die soon may well walk it into a bee Hive colony if they are robbing it, be careful with them pesticides , i have some bediocard here dry and wet but i will only use the wet as it kills them quicker and does not get spread like the powder.

 

[Swift Nick]

The wasps will walk the powder into the nest ,the wasps that do not die soon may well walk it into a bee Hive colony if they are robbing it, be careful with them pesticides , i have some bediocard here dry and wet but i will only use the wet as it kills them quicker and does not get spread like the powder.

Thank you for that good advice, it is easy to react quickly when you see a problem, I will see if there is a better more contained way.
Thanks Nick

 

[Karol]

As this section is for beginners:

1. It's not 100ml of honey that's recommended. The instructions say no more than 100g of honey when used around beehives, i.e. approximately 68ml. If you use 100ml, i.e. 147g there is a danger of attracting honey bees. To supplement 100g of honey we recommend using real maple syrup.

2. Using tunnel entrances alone is okay but if scouting wasps are not dealt with i.e. just batted away then there are two potential consequences. The first is that they target returning worker bees and amputate abdomens to get at the collected nectar in the honeybee's crop. The second is that when it comes to harvesting there will still be a high background population of wasps in the vicinity increasing risk to hives and beekeepers alike when the hives are cracked open/harvested. The combination of tunnel entrances (which includes under floor entrances) and high efficiency traps correctly positioned will not only protect hives but it will reduce the background population of nuisance wasps in the vicinity giving you more time to harvest your crop without being mobbed by loitering wasps.

3. Destroying wasp nests during the day with pesticides whilst the nests are still in hunting phase can prematurely precipitate the nuisance wasp season especially if using wet ficam, i.e. you risk converting hunting (basically harmless disinterested) wasps into sweet feeding nuisance wasps! My advice would be to leave hunting nests well alone until you are absolutely confident that wasps have converted to sweet feeding. Busy wasp nests are invariably in the hunting phase and you will observed the foraging wasps bringing back insect prey to the nest. Quiet nests will be in the sweet feeding phase and fair game albeit that it is better to use a foam pesticide spray to seal the entrance and then inoculate the nest to prevent poisoned wasps flying of to poison hives.

Hope this helps

 

[MartinL]

Sorry, I'm too tight to be wasting honey in any case!

The washing-up liquid is key here,

otherwise you get a ball of wasps on something akin to a 16thC water torture rolling round & round with a few very angry ones able to escape!

 

[Karol]

Washing up liquid???

 

[Beefriendly]

y but if scouting wasps are not dealt with

Be really good if you could provide a few scientific reference to scouting wasp behaviour and how it relates to the efficiency of recruitment of their fellows, in the same way that bees do.
Social recruitment to food sources in Eusocial European wasps is very poor, unlike bees.
Anyone selling wasp traps based on the principal of trapping the fictitious scout wasps and them not then being able to return and recruit their fellows to the same food source is a charlatan. I do recall you also reckoned a wasps nest removed the equivalent of 3 tons of insects from the environment each year. Yeah.
Someone is obviously making money out of selling these traps..whoever he /she is.
Home made traps with clear plastic bottles and similar bait will do the same and for far less money.

 

[Karol]

Be really good if you could provide a few scientific reference to scouting wasp behaviour and how it relates to the efficiency of recruitment of their fellows, in the same way that bees do.
Social recruitment to food sources in Eusocial European wasps is very poor, unlike bees.
Anyone selling wasp traps based on the principal of trapping the fictitious scout wasps and them not then being able to return and recruit their fellows to the same food source is a charlatan. I do recall you also reckoned a wasps nest removed the equivalent of 3 tons of insects from the environment each year. Yeah.
Someone is obviously making money out of selling these traps..whoever he /she is.
Home made traps with clear plastic bottles and similar bait will do the same and for far less money.

It is no surprise that the forum keeps losing new members.
Not for your benefit Beefriendly but for the benefit of beginners:

The scouting behaviour of wasps (i.e. recruitment of colleagues to a food source) is efficient. Scientific papers that have studied recruitment in wasps have failed to take into account that during the sweet feeding phase most worker wasps are away from the nest foraging for food and that the nest is by and large empty. So naturally recruitment is slower because there aren't necessarily the wasps 'at home' to communicate the location to (unlike in a beehive). Nevertheless if scouting wasps are allowed to find food they will overtime recruit their colleagues.

Low efficiency traps are dangerous. Wherever they have been used in public spaces they have resulted in increased wasp activity and increased sting rates because they attract more wasps than they kill. Around hives they result in greater wasp pressure and more overwhelmed hives.

I'm not going to engage directly with Beefriendly simply because he has a personal vendetta against me and he is one of the reasons why I have effectively retired from the forum. That said I do still have a deep empathy for beekeepers and will continue to provide objective advice where I believe it will do good.

 

[Somerford]

I put a Waspbane in yesterday evening, waiting to see how it does.

Be really good if you could provide a few scientific reference to scouting wasp behaviour and how it relates to the efficiency of recruitment of their fellows, in the same way that bees do.
Social recruitment to food sources in Eusocial European wasps is very poor, unlike bees.
Anyone selling wasp traps based on the principal of trapping the fictitious scout wasps and them not then being able to return and recruit their fellows to the same food source is a charlatan. I do recall you also reckoned a wasps nest removed the equivalent of 3 tons of insects from the environment each year. Yeah.
Someone is obviously making money out of selling these traps..whoever he /she is.
Home made traps with clear plastic bottles and similar bait will do the same and for far less money.

Be Friendly - rather than not Be Friendly !

It's so easy to through missiles and make wild accusations of people being a charlatan which is uncalled for and unjust

The science around the use of waspbane is there and it works. Having checked on 5 of my apiaries yesterday And observing the hives and wasp activity the hives are being well protected and the waspbane is filling up with little activity at the hive entrances, particularly in my Nuc Apiary.

Someone always makes money out of things one. Can buy - good on them it's called Commerce ! I rather think Thorn* M*isemore or whoever you use also makes profit. Happy days it's what makes the world go around.

So this thread is balanced let's see some photos of your wasp traps and an explanation of how you make them

KR

S

 

[maddydog]

Sorry, I'm too tight to be wasting honey in any case!
:

That's what Aldi's £1 a jar stuff is for! Plus I didn't have any mango pulp with me

 

[MartinL]

That's what Aldi's £1 a jar stuff is for! . . . .

Imported from god only knows where, potentially rife with disease?

No thanks
Oh and, (I'm going to sound like Baz Luhrmann now)
don't forget about the detergent!

 

[Beefriendly]

Scientific papers that have studied recruitment in wasps have failed to take into account that during the sweet feeding phase most worker wasps are away from the nest foraging for food and that the nest is by and large empty. So naturally recruitment is slower because there aren't necessarily the wasps 'at home' to communicate the location to (unlike in a beehive).

Good at least you agree their is no science to back your wacky theory and so the whole of science is wrong and a single pest controller is right!!! Wow you have some balls there.
Please don't take this as personal Karol, but anyone who is making money out of conning people is a snakeoil salesman,. All I can do is warn people that the idea of scout wasp recruiting other wasps is a hogwash. But I can't stop people in believing a good sales patter. Fools and their money seem to be. easily parted.
Some online comments from other dissatisfied customers which can be found on Amazon.
"Went to fit my refill to the vapour chimney today - and the chimney shattered! Must be exposure to UV light - but they don't sell the chimneys separately so I have to buy the whole new kit as well as the refill"

"After three days not a single wasp has entered this useless contraption. A jam jar with some honey and water has proved more effective after one hour !!! Please avoid and save your money, I wish I had, and yes I did follow the instructions. Despite being placed a few yards away from a wasps nest ZERO WASPS WERE CAUGHT !!!!"

"I had high hopes for this product, in the event it succeeded in trapping and killing 3 wasps over the whole summer. A jar which had contained raspberry jam collected around 50 in 0ne week. Needless to say, it is back to the jam jars this summer "
There are lots more......

 

[Beefriendly]

It's so easy to through missiles and make wild accusations of people being a charlatan which is uncalled for and unjust

The science around the use of waspbane is there

Care to point us in the direction of this science?
I don't make wild accusations but you should read things for yourself rather than take my word for it. Review paper on wasp foraging.

Any trap will work with the right bait but with differing efficiency, but the theory behind scout wasps and further recruitment flies against current science where eminent researchers have look for social recruitment and conclude that it is poor or non existent in wasps.

As for wasp traps I don't use them, my bees are all capable of looking after themselves as I suspect most of yours are.

 

[Karol]

Good at least you agree their is no science to back your wacky theory and so the whole of science is wrong and a single pest controller is right!!! Wow you have some balls there.
Please don't take this as personal Karol, but anyone who is making money out of conning people is a snakeoil salesman,. All I can do is warn people that the idea of scout wasp recruiting other wasps is a hogwash. But I can't stop people in believing a good sales patter. Fools and their money seem to be. easily parted.
Some online comments from other dissatisfied customers which can be found on Amazon.
"Went to fit my refill to the vapour chimney today - and the chimney shattered! Must be exposure to UV light - but they don't sell the chimneys separately so I have to buy the whole new kit as well as the refill"

"After three days not a single wasp has entered this useless contraption. A jam jar with some honey and water has proved more effective after one hour !!! Please avoid and save your money, I wish I had, and yes I did follow the instructions. Despite being placed a few yards away from a wasps nest ZERO WASPS WERE CAUGHT !!!!"

"I had high hopes for this product, in the event it succeeded in trapping and killing 3 wasps over the whole summer. A jar which had contained raspberry jam collected around 50 in 0ne week. Needless to say, it is back to the jam jars this summer "
There are lots more......

For the record Beefriendly, I'm not a pest controller. I'm a healthcare professional serving the public good. Our stakeholders include a charity benefitting patients and our endeavours in integrated wasp management are purely altruistic, i.e. the product is and has always been loss making but we continue to support it because it is saving countless lives and reducing the burden on the NHS. The fact that it helps protect bee hives is a by-product.

I really, really don't want to engage with you but there is a danger that others will accept what you say and either their bees or they will be harmed as a consequence because unlike you I don't hide behind an avatar and I'm not a keyboard coward.

So apart from insulting my integrity you have also insulted all those beekeepers who use the product as fools. I am surprised that the moderators on this forum allow such conduct but then the forum is losing its prestige and gaining an unsavoury reputation.

I have no wish to defend the product on this forum because doing so sails close to breaching forum rules but I will say this. Any person can go and buy a builders trowel from a DIY store but should they then automatically expect to be able to build a house with it. The same goes with a scientific tool where efficacy and effectiveness are not the same thing. So yes, I freely accept that the product has bad reviews and I'm not surprised. To put it into perspective it takes 12 hours to train a pest controller (which I am accredited to do via a nationally recognised CPD scheme for pest controllers) to use the product effectively so it's never going to be a sound-bite commodity that will sit comfortably with you.

 

[Karol]

Imported from god only knows where, potentially rife with disease?

No thanks
Oh and, (I'm going to sound like Baz Luhrmann now)
don't forget about the detergent!

Detergent?

If by some chance Martin you are referring to the use of detergent in wasp traps to break surface tension to drown wasps then it doesn't work bar the first few minutes. The reason quite simply is that wasp abdomens are hollow and so act as buoyancy aids. Once the first few wasps drown they form a raft that the other wasps crawl over.

 

[Beefriendly]

So apart from insulting my integrity.

All I have asked is for you to produce some scientific research backing your claimed idea which is at odds with current entomologists thoughts on social recruitment to food sources in vespids.
Indeed the opposite, if you were to be proved correct it would make for a major rewrite in wasp biology and our understanding of them.

 

[Swarm]

All I have asked is for you to produce some scientific research backing your claimed idea which is at odds with current entomologists thoughts on social recruitment to food sources in vespids.
Indeed the opposite, if you were to be proved correct it would make for a major rewrite in wasp biology and our understanding of them.

Utter crap, you did all this before under a different name(s) Everyone got bored with it then and now you want to start all over again. Take it to PM if you insist on pursuing your agenda and stop cluttering a thread that is intended for beginners.

 

[Beefriendly]

stop cluttering a thread that is intended for beginners.

They have a right to be given accurate information.
I'll leave you with a quote from a very good peer reviewed paper in Annual Reviews of Entomology on wasp foraging behaviour. My last words on this thread.

"Compared to the behavior of other social insects, the recruitment of social wasps to resources is poorly developed. Despite possession of mechanisms, such as trail pheromones (60), that could enable communication of distance and direction information, and despite the potential advantages that could accrue from efficient recruitment of nestmates directly to specific locations, social wasps do not recruit.
They remain the only group of eusocial insects in which communication of distance and direction to food have not been reported."

 

[Karol]

Okay - for the benefit of beginners:

The paper that Beefriendly refers to is a review which looks at vespid wasps as a whole. In the UK we are only concerned with vespine - not vespid wasps. Vespid wasps include for example Polistes wasps which behave entirely differently to Vespinae wasps. So for example Polistes wasp nests are made up of several individual colonies working together with several queens and one dominant queen. Their behaviour is a midway point between solitary and higher developed eusocial vespine wasp beahiour.

Vespine feeding behaviour is complex with many confounding factors. So for example, hunting wasps turned into sweet feeding wasps as a consequence of nest eradication do not recruit colleagues successfully because they have no nest to go back to. Occasionally they will aggregate (roost) together after nest eradication but these are loose aggregations that only really form at dusk so recruitment is not strong. A significant feature of vespine wasp recruitment is the nature of the food source which can be either one visit consumable or residual. So for example vespine wasps that are hunting will not recruit to small insect prey that they have caught and are dismembering. Conversely if hunting wasps find carrion, i.e. a residual food source then they will recruit to it. The same goes for sweet food sources. There are single hit food sources such as flowers and aphids that vespine wasps will not recruit to and then there are residual sweet food sources such as fallen fruit and bee hives that wasps do recruit to.

 

[Codford]

Thanks Karol - useful and informative.

 

[coffindodger]

Thanks Karol - useful and informative.

There are papers published on the subject and the concept of 'I'll show you the way' seems proven. Just because wasps are poor at it in some situations doesn't mean it is invalid to use the principle for control. Completely different to bee signposting. Also both Vespa germanica and V. vulgaris in UK and there is an avoidance behaviour which confuses observations.