Wasp catching jam jars

[Karol]

Karol, couldn't the returning foragers not be entering the nest because they can sense the treatment just sprayed, or alarm pheromones from wasps dying from the treatment?

That's not what our research shows. We know for example that if a nest in an attic is lanced with pesticide and the sentry point is remote from the nest, for example at a facia board such as in the video clip, foraging wasps still enter the nest having been granted access permission by the 'untouched' sentries at the remote fascia entry point.

Whatever the reason, it still can lead to the potential creation of 'premature' nuisance wasps.

 

[Karol]

Hence the reason I treat Jasper nests at dusk......so you get the whole lot in one fell swoop....and they then don't go looking for other sugar sources, as they are pushing up the daisies !

That's the advice that I try to give to pesties when they treat nests but it's not always practical in which case consideration should be given to dealing with any nuisance wasps that might subsequently materialise. It's not a problem, just needs thinking about.

 

[Elaine]

We have a wasp next just under the eaves, just above our garage roof. I saw it when I was up there 2 weeks agao to fix a leak. The wasps were coming out of the nest and warning me off, although I didn't get stung. There are a few coming round the hives in teh garden, but they are being seen off well enough. We are now almost ready to do the main work on teh flat roof, and reluctant as I am to kill them, I know we will have to because we will not be 'allowed' by the wasps to be up there. We were going to get comercially availabel wasp nest spray and deal with them ourselves, but is this the best thing to do? Do we really need to bring in pest control? It's only a small nest, (about 4" diameter, and 2 to 3" deep ) and easily accessible.

 

[steve1958]

When I inspected my Hives this week I found one of them contained a lot of wasps.
So I reduced the entrance to one Bee space, and decided to try the fish bait trap.
Using an old bucket I added some water with a drop of washing up liquid in.
Bought some reduced price (Use by date about to expire) from the supermarket for 29 pence
Hung the fish over the water and placed this a few feet from the Hive.
Result: Hundreds of Drowned wasps and not one drowned Bee.

However
Yesterday I found a wasps nest about 200ft from my Hives
I watched wasps flying in and out of this hole in the ground, and I am pretty certain some were carrying pieces of fish.

My question now is how many baby wasps will be reared by my feeding them?
and how does this relate to the amount drowned.

I have a feeling that I may have been doing more harm than good.

The wasp nest is now destroyed

 

[Somerford]

We have a wasp next just under the eaves, just above our garage roof. I saw it when I was up there 2 weeks agao to fix a leak. The wasps were coming out of the nest and warning me off, although I didn't get stung. There are a few coming round the hives in teh garden, but they are being seen off well enough. We are now almost ready to do the main work on teh flat roof, and reluctant as I am to kill them, I know we will have to because we will not be 'allowed' by the wasps to be up there. We were going to get comercially availabel wasp nest spray and deal with them ourselves, but is this the best thing to do? Do we really need to bring in pest control? It's only a small nest, (about 4" diameter, and 2 to 3" deep ) and easily accessible.

I use ant powder, works a treat !

 

[Karol]

When I inspected my Hives this week I found one of them contained a lot of wasps.
So I reduced the entrance to one Bee space, and decided to try the fish bait trap.
Using an old bucket I added some water with a drop of washing up liquid in.
Bought some reduced price (Use by date about to expire) from the supermarket for 29 pence
Hung the fish over the water and placed this a few feet from the Hive.
Result: Hundreds of Drowned wasps and not one drowned Bee.

However
Yesterday I found a wasps nest about 200ft from my Hives
I watched wasps flying in and out of this hole in the ground, and I am pretty certain some were carrying pieces of fish.

Almost definitely - another example of a low efficiency trap that attracts more wasps than it kills and ends up killing more wasps than need be.

My question now is how many baby wasps will be reared by my feeding them?
and how does this relate to the amount drowned.

It is highly unlikely that only one nest was involved. The reason why the 'Red Indian' wasp trap works is because it (unwittingly) takes advantage of a certain aspect of wasp behaviour, i.e. the self defense drop mechanism. Wasps when threatened in flight (or elsewhere) will fall on average 30cm (and this is a pretty precise distance - we know because we've measured it) before flying off again. The Red Indian wasp trap traps wasp because wasps from different colonies will scrap over the food and will therefore, on average fall 30cm when they become entangled with themselves. By definition, the Red Indian wasp trap works best when there are least two different colonies in competition with each other.

This video shows a dome trap. The reason I show it is not to demonstrate how poor it is, but because the height of the dome was set exactly 25cm above the white IBC. Note how all the falling wasps can't help but 'bump' into the IBC. Pretty fascinating.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_L1pXXHzbI"]Wasp Pot.mp4 - YouTube[/ame]

What does it mean in reality? Well, it's quite likely other nests will have fed their young which would have been there anyway so I doubt it would have much impact on wasp population numbers. However, by giving wasps an easy protein meal for their young, the adults wouldn't have had to catch the same weight of insects so what you've effectively done is saved the lives of those other insect pests that the wasps would have otherwise hunted on, i.e. filth flies, grubs, larvae, ticks, caterpillars, mosquitos etc etc. albeit you may have distracted some of the wasps that were probably preying on the grubs in your hive.

I have a feeling that I may have been doing more harm than good.

The wasp nest is now destroyed

Hmmm! If the nest was in hunting mode then I it depends on whether you managed to kill all the foragers instead of converting them into sweet feeding wasps which now might come after the honey in the hive.

It might have been better to not only reduce the entrance to your hive but to also install a pane of glass in front of the hive.

 

[mbc]

It's only a small nest, (about 4" diameter, and 2 to 3" deep ) and easily accessible.

Put an inside out carrier bag over your hand, grab the nest and detach it from where its hanging, pull the bag over it and tie, job done.

 

[alldigging]

Put an inside out carrier bag over your hand, grab the nest and detach it from where its hanging, pull the bag over it and tie, job done.

I reckon that sounds way too easy.
Like you might want to be all wrapped up in strong gloves and some sort of suit designed to keep flying insects out. But where might you find one of them?

 

[Elaine]

Put an inside out carrier bag over your hand, grab the nest and detach it from where its hanging, pull the bag over it and tie, job done.

Unfortunately it is not a ball shape - more like a dish stuck on to the eaves so would not be easy to grab

 

[Gilberdyke John]

Unfortunately it is not a ball shape - more like a dish stuck on to the eaves so would not be easy to grab

Trigger spray containing diesel oil and annoint the nest copiously. 24 hours later its dead. Scrape off with paint scraper, take outside and have a bonfire. Any residue in the loft will evaporate slowly.

 

[Luminos]

I reckon that sounds way too easy.
Like you might want to be all wrapped up in strong gloves and some sort of suit designed to keep flying insects out. But where might you find one of them?