Beginners !!! Wasp management

[Somerford]

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......

it all depends on what time of the season you set the trap and what you use as the bait as per the suggestion a mix of honey, sweet beer and juice and water with the activator work well

If you set it too early nothing will happen.

All 8 of mine are working well and no wasps to be seen around the beehive entrances. That's not snake oil. Get over it BF

 

[Somerford]

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.

Excellent information for beekeepers - beginners and old beeks like me alike.

I have to say I have learned so much from Karol's posts on wasps and it aids me when I do talks and festivals (one next week Fieldview's Area:Bee - quick plug there....) and for those who live in the countryside who seem to be inundated with wasps on their patios etc I am always pleased to help and advise them.

Interestingly, the VitaPharma Hornet traps I bought and set in the spring as a defence against the dark lord (Asian Hornet !) also worked to trap Queen wasps but based on wasp numbers at present I don't believe it dented the population - probably left more food for other queen wasps and their colonies. I didn't capture any hornets on all but one site which was closest to Tetbury but they were English Hornets.

For beginners, WaspBane is one of The methods I'd recommend as part of an overall pest management exercise, but other forms of wasp control are available should you wish to use them

And it's raining so plenty of house bees to guard the citadels today !!!

KR

Somerford

 

[colinc]

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

Thank you for clarifying the measurements, I appreciate you taking the time to explain this again. I know this has gone around repeatedly but being new to the forum, I was trying to assess other people's experiences.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[Show me the honey]

All I can say is I'm glad I had no trouble with wasp last year and touch wood I won't this year!!! (I don't put anything out to catch/attract them)

 

[Millet]

Just a thought here but i checked my wasp trap today and it is about two inches deep with wasps, which has me wondering, how come it has so many wasps in it if it caught the original foraging wasps thus not allowing them to go tell there mates, it also states that a trap must be placed up wind for one reason only and that is so the wasps can smell it, so to me it is all about the smell of the bait used that attracts so many wasps not communicating with each other.
I'm not knocking the traps though as they certainly catch wasps which are 99% unable to escape from.

 

[colinc]

Just a thought here but i checked my wasp trap today and it is about two inches deep with wasps, which has me wondering, how come it has so many wasps in it if it caught the original foraging wasps thus not allowing them to go tell there mates, it also states that a trap must be placed up wind for one reason only and that is so the wasps can smell it, so to me it is all about the smell of the bait used that attracts so many wasps not communicating with each other.

I'm not knocking the traps though as they certainly catch wasps which are 99% unable to escape from.

Traps should be downwind of your hives so wasps following scent upwind to source find the trap before they get to the hives otherwise they would not reach the trap


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[Karol]

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.

Avoidance behaviour is interesting. This paper is a good read: https://tinyurl.com/ydxd654m.

I'm not sure how much store I put into the findings though. Number of reasons. Olfactory cues are different and it wouldn't surprise me if what was extracted in the study was alarm pheromone which is produced around nest disruption. The pheromone is short lived meaning that even small differences in sampling methodology might result in different potencies in the test arms. Alarm pheromone is not the same as the pheromones produced in communication and feeding. Also, from our own research we understand conspecifics from the same nest to 'talk' to each other via limb semaphore and wing vibration (at the food source) and to fight with conspecifics from foreign nests and with other wasps which also influences recruitment. Finally, when working with traps we discovered that wasps will avoid other dead wasps that amass in one location. It's one reason why traps have to be maintained fairly regularly to keep catching wasps unless the bait system denatures the smell of dead wasps.

 

[Hivemaker.]

when working with traps we discovered that wasps will avoid other dead wasps that amass in one location. It's one reason why traps have to be maintained fairly regularly to keep catching wasps unless the bait system denatures the smell of dead wasps.

I find with my trap they just keep on entering, even when the floor (national hive size approx 18"x18") is three inches deep with dead wasps, no liquid of any kind used as bait, so, all the wasps are dry.

 

[Millet]

Traps should be downwind of your hives so wasps following scent upwind to source find the trap before they get to the hives otherwise they would not reach the trap


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Up or down wind makes no difference at all, how often does the wind blow in the same direction

 

[Erichalfbee]

The smell of honey from the OMF surely will attract wasps. Putting the trap next to the box surely provides an unguarded source of food.

 

[Karol]

I find with my trap they just keep on entering, even when the floor (national hive size approx 18"x18") is three inches deep with dead wasps, no liquid of any kind used as bait, so, all the wasps are dry.

I would expect that to be the case because I would expect there to be a significant amount of alarm pheromone in such a situation.

I should clarify that our experience is with wet traps so dessication is likely to play a role.

 

[Millet]

I would expect that to be the case because I would expect there to be a significant amount of alarm pheromone in such a situation.

I should clarify that our experience is with wet traps so dessication is likely to play a role.

From what i have seen wet traps that have nearly dried out with dead moist wasps filling the liquid content still attract wasps, the smell and not the scouts must bring more wasps in from all areas, so to me the only reason a trap works is smell alone and not all this wasp communication palava. move the trap somewhere else and the wasps will Smell the new location imo.

 

[Karol]

Just a thought here but i checked my wasp trap today and it is about two inches deep with wasps, which has me wondering, how come it has so many wasps in it if it caught the original foraging wasps thus not allowing them to go tell there mates, it also states that a trap must be placed up wind for one reason only and that is so the wasps can smell it, so to me it is all about the smell of the bait used that attracts so many wasps not communicating with each other.
I'm not knocking the traps though as they certainly catch wasps which are 99% unable to escape from.

I understand the scepticism but the explanation is different.

Your hives are a powerful draw for wasps which pick up the scent trail which they follow to the hives. By using tunnel entrances you deny wasps access to a food source that they can programme feed to which means that they continuously search for food in the vicinity of where the concentration gradient is greatest which is why positioning of high efficiency traps is so important. The high efficiency trap provides the least path of resistance and the wasps are caught.

If you really want to test the hypothesis of communicable attraction of traps then this is how you do it. Choose a sight well away from any hives or food source where there is no sign of any wasps. The middle of a field is best in a rural location. That way you will know that you are only looking at the effect of the trap. Set two traps side by side literally a few inches apart - one a jam jar/low efficiency trap and one a high efficiency trap. Bait them up exactly the same so that there is no difference in the attractiveness of the bait. Make sure that the wind is tangential to the axis between the traps, i.e. the traps are not in each others scent plumes.

What I would expect to see is that the low efficiency trap will catch hundreds of wasps and the high efficiency trap probably catch one or two if that but wasps will continue to persist in the vicinity of the low efficiency trap. Then remove the low efficiency trap and place the high efficiency trap in its exact location so that the entrance flute(s) to the high efficiency trap are in the exact original position of the entrance hole to the low efficiency trap. What I would then expect to see is the high efficiency trap trap out ALL the wasps so that there are none left. After that the high efficiency trap should be quiet and only catch the odd stray scouting wasp that crosses its scent plume and the background population of persisting wasps should effectively fall to zero.

Unless there is something new I can share with beginners in this section I shall abstain from further participation. My intention was only to stop beekeepers unintentionally catching bees by overloading traps with excess honey which may be used safely but only if following the instructions for beekeeping IWM very carefully as provided on the website (not the consumer domestic instructions).

 

[Beefriendly]

All 8 of mine are working well and no wasps to be seen around the beehive entrances.

I have no traps and no wasps can be seen around my beehive entrances.
No snake-oil needed.

 

[Beefriendly]

Just a thought here but i checked my wasp trap today and it is about two inches deep with wasps, which has me wondering, how come it has so many wasps in it if it caught the original foraging wasps thus not allowing them to go tell there mates, .

If you sort through them the ones wearing little blue badges are the scouts.
Bet you don't find any

 

[Somerford]

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."

You couldn't resist coming back to it could you ? Thought you'd had a 'Flounce'.....

Welcome back but be Friendly for the sakes of the the beginners

KR

Somerford

 

[Somerford]

I have no traps and no wasps can be seen around my beehive entrances.
No snake-oil needed.

It's not snake oil you blinkered individual. Your rants suggest an individual who is just ignoring rather than listening. You choose not to trap wasps,

I do, and I recommend beginners do too and Waspbane is my choice

KR

S

 

[Swarm]

They have a right to be given accurate information.

You mean your personal crusade to discredit Karol?

My last words on this thread.

Didn't think so.

 

[Millet]

You couldn't resist coming back to it could you ? Thought you'd had a 'Flounce'.....

Welcome back but be Friendly for the sakes of the the beginners

KR

Somerford

I think you need to read through some other threads and you will see he is friendly.
A few months back i was desperate for a Queen as my old Queen had vanished and all attempts to get Virgins mated failed, the only person who offered help before i ordered one online was Beefriendly, not only did he give me a marked and clipped 2017 Buckfast Queen he also give me it in a 6 frame Nuc and not a penny changed hands, yet other folk are selling Queens in excess of £35 and Nucs for £100 + .

Not everyone will get along on these internet forums its human nature, but he certainly gets my respect.

 

[Karol]

And when we contribute to a thread for the benefit of beginners providing advice which could literally change a beekeeper's fate or the fate of their hives should patronage influence that contribution? Which by the way is a rhetorical question.