Wasp traps

[Karol]

The average 70 Kg human will consume circa 86 metric tons over the average life span. Another example of a tardis?

 

[Beefriendly]

The average 70 Kg human will consume circa 86 metric tons over the average life span. Another example of a tardis?

No, just another example of your ******** and obfuscation.
That works out at around 1 metric ton per year in an average human sized body that lives to 86.....or about 2.7kgs of food per day........ not your preposterous, ludicrous and laughable claim of 5 tons of insects in less than 6 months which equates to 40kgs of insects per day at peak summer into a football sized nest.
You simply physically cannot fit that weight and volume inside a nest the size of a football.....
40 kgs of weight and the nest would fall to the ground...
Now be a good boy and stop spouting this dribble.

 

[taurus]

I am a simple man and I make wasp traps out of jam jars with various baits inside them. For what it's worth I have several with jammy water, beer, Vimto, mushed up ham, and Cola.

Most are empty with just one filled with wasps (and only wasps). That's a jam jar filled with jammy water.

Why is this one full of wasps and all the others empty? I cannot say, other than when I splattered a couple of wasps I put them into that jar.

So my experience is that wasps attract other wasps. I have consistently found that adding a swatted wasp to the brew seems to attract others.

 

[Swarm]

I don't trap Wasps, never have.

 

[Beefriendly]

So my experience is that wasps attract other wasps. I have consistently found that adding a swatted wasp to the brew seems to attract others.

You are indeed correct sir. Well observed.
I first noticed this when using brown vs clear plastic home made traps. the clear always had more wasps inside and as they got more wasps they got more effective. A bit of reading confirmed that one of their food finding strategies is visually seeing other wasps feeding/ect or whatever. Just being dead in a clear plastic bottle works well.
I like your idea of adding a few as an attractant right at the start, will try that myself as they are just starting to become a nuisance in the house.

 

[beebopper]

I am a simple man and I make wasp traps out of jam jars with various baits inside them. For what it's worth I have several with jammy water, beer, Vimto, mushed up ham, and Cola.

Most are empty with just one filled with wasps (and only wasps). That's a jam jar filled with jammy water.

Why is this one full of wasps and all the others empty? I cannot say, other than when I splattered a couple of wasps I put them into that jar.

So my experience is that wasps attract other wasps. I have consistently found that adding a swatted wasp to the brew seems to attract others.

and a little more economical than buying attractants.

 

[Erichalfbee]

I don't trap Wasps, never have.

I am a simple woman
I cannot for the life of me understand why some are losing so many brain cells in angst and anger in this thread.
Maybe it’s something to do with testosterone?

 

[Beefriendly]

Maybe it’s something to do with testosterone?

Nope...too old to have any of that floating around
Perhaps it's because (in my case) I don't like con artists peddling false advice or facts when they have a financial interest.

This forum can be quite influential in sales downstream. Enrico mentioned a product on ebay ...within a few hours seller had increased price for £4 to £5 due to demand.

 

[pargyle]

Nope...too old to have any of that floating around
Perhaps it's because (in my case) I don't like con artists peddling false advice or facts when they have a financial interest.

Or there again ... some people are just eristic ...

 

[Beefriendly]

Or there again ... some people are just eristic ...

Like yourself?

 

[JWF]

I am a simple woman
I cannot for the life of me understand why some are losing so many brain cells in angst and anger in this thread.
Maybe it’s something to do with testosterone?

It's because of cr@p like this that I don't visit this forum as much as I used to. It's just tiresome.

 

[Millet]

Or there again ... some people are just eristic ...

 

[B+.]

Maybe it’s something to do with testosterone?

Nope. Plenty of us have that but choose not to get involved in things we don't know anything about.

 

[beebopper]

As a scientist and teacher I just like facts straight and transparent - and yes I find reasoned debate/discussion stimulating. Its how one learns. Nothing to do with testosterone.

PS I love the summer holidays!!

 

[Julie in Ash]

I saw this come up as a recent thread and it's something I'm interested in too, but after 30 plus minutes of wading through personal spats that seem to go back years... way, way before I joined... my head is spinning and I didn't learn much.

I dislike wasps and am interested in any ideas for dealing with them. Saw some reference to jam and cheap lager.... can someone 'splain that to me please? What do I do? I like things that sound simple and aren't all in Latin. I am not beyond professional gadgets if all else fails of course, but I like to try the simple things first.

 

[Karol]

Hi Julie,

Ignoring all the preceding 'banter' which shouldn't in any event clutter the beginners section, here's my advice to you for integrated wasp management around your hives:

1. Do your best to sustain the strength of your hives coming into this time of year.

2. Use tunnel entrances that create multiple ranks of defending sentries. Millet has posted excellent pictures of how this can be achieved quite simply. Under floor entrances are a form of tunnel entrance with the added bonus of vertical entry which wasps find harder to manage. Simply reducing entrance sizes to two bee spaces is insufficient because it only allows for one rank of sentry bees to defend the entrance and wasps will find their way past and during time of heavy flow the reduced entrance will impede honeybee traffic arguably weakening the hive which is counter productive.

3. Remove all extraneous sources of sugar/honey from the vicinity of the hives to reduce attraction. This is especially important during harvesting. This also includes removing fruit litter if your hive(s) are sited near fruiting plants.

4. Try to avoid unnecessarily opening your hive(s) to wasps during the sweet feeding season. If you have to open the hive consider doing so early in the morning or late in the evening when wasp activity falls off but be mindful how the hive might respond with a higher number of resident bees at the time of opening.

5. Do no squash wasps on the hive. This will only mark the hive with wasp alarm pheromones which will attract more wasps and potentially precipitate frenzied feeding which risks rapidly overwhelming the hive.

6. If you need to 'vent' your hive pay particular attention not to accidentally open a channel for wasps to get into the hive. If you vent your hive by means of a hole (instead of matchsticks and the like) consider using fine wire insect mesh to cover the hole.

7. Monitor your hives closely for evidence of wasp 'penetration'. Hives that are disturbed by animals, strong winds, vandals etc will become susceptible to massed overwhelming attacks in short order. If you follow the above advice then strong colonies protected behind tunnel entrances should easily bat away scouting wasps preventing them from gaining access and you shouldn't need to employ trapping.

8. If you observe wasps penetrating your hive(s) then you should consider trapping. Avoid at all costs using low efficiency traps. Efficiency and effectiveness are two entirely different things. Low efficiency traps allow wasps to enter, feed and escape. The escaping wasps will communicate the location of the trap to the nest and before you know it you will be increasing the population of wasps in the vicinity of your hive(s) raising the risk of the hive being overwhelmed. High efficiency traps kill all of the wasps that they catch so that the location of the trap (and therefore the hive(s)) is not communicated back to the nest. The difficulty with low efficiency traps is that they catch and kill vast numbers of wasps and so to the lay person look like they are doing a good job. However, they do nothing to reduce the background population of wasps in the immediate vicinity and only serve to make matters worse for the hive. By definition, high efficiency traps catch and kill far fewer wasps but they actively reduce the population of wasps persisting in the vicinity and thereby reduce pressure on the hive. High efficiency traps will never make the situation worse but they have to be used in very specific ways to be effective based on the presenting situation.

Hope this helps. There's more for example on nest eradication, apiary orientation/set up, trapping strategies etc but they're for another day if you suffer continued problems. Suffice it to say at this stage that I'd recommend not treating wasp nests without seeking further advice as incorrectly treated nests can actually make things worse if done whilst the wasp nest is still in it's hunting phase.

 

[Karol]

<snip> not your preposterous, ludicrous and laughable claim of 5 tons of insects in less than 6 months which equates to 40kgs of insects per day at peak summer into a football sized nest.

Okay, let's go with 40Kg which won't be 40Kg because of that 40Kg a significant proportion will be left behind. When a wasp kills a beetle for example, it will pare away the limbs and carapace.

Nevertheless 40Kg per day equates to 8g per wasp per day based on a 5000 sized nest or 3g for a 13,000 sized nest which are quite common. Spradbery reported 3g per day per wasp so 'in the ball park'.

Going back to the 1.6 tons of nectar consumed per hive per year per previous post. Nectar is about 40% sugar, i.e. 640Kg sugar consumed per 50,000 hive of honeybees per annum.

Insects on the other hand contain top end 50mg of carbohydrates per Kg of fresh (wet) matter: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352364616300013.

Assuming that honeybees and wasps burn energy at roughly the same rate then that's 64Kg of sugar per 5000 wasps per annum or 1280Kg (1,28 tons) fresh insect matter at 50mg carbohydrate per Kg.

As I said, I tried to disprove the 4 to 5 metric ton figure but kept coming back to it being 'in the ball park' give or take based on wasp nest sizes varying considerably from 2000 to 20,000 wasps per nest with 10,000 size nests not being uncommon.

You simply physically cannot fit that weight and volume inside a nest the size of a football.....

That's too simplistic a picture. In not a question of 40Kg going in and nothing coming out.

Wasps burn a considerable amount of energy which is lost as expired CO2. Add faecal and water losses (insects being circa 70% water: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.616.820&rep=rep1&type=pdf ) and the weight of the nest doesn't change appreciably because the gains and losses largely balance out so as quickly as wasps bring insect food to the nest the food is consumed and dissipated/lost.

40 kgs of weight and the nest would fall to the ground...

It's not uncommon for wasp nests to crash through people's ceilings or fall out of trees when they get too heavy. Google it if you want but I have no interest in posting alarmist tabloid stories. The largest wasp nests (V. germanica) tend to be in the ground so it's a non issue.

 

[Erichalfbee]

I dislike wasps and am interested in any ideas for dealing with them. Saw some reference to jam and cheap lager.... can someone 'splain that to me please? What do I do? I like things that sound simple and aren't all in Latin. I am not beyond professional gadgets if all else fails of course, but I like to try the simple things first.

Keep your colonies strong uniting as necessary. That’s not to say a nuc can’t defend itself, it can if it’s full of bees.
Reduce your entrances even down to one space if needed but better still, put the broods on underfloor entrances. PM Jenkinsbrynmair for his modified plans and you’re laughing. I have them if he doesn’t get back to you.

 

[Beefriendly]

Saw some reference to jam and cheap lager.... can someone 'splain that to me please? What do I do? I like things that sound simple and aren't all in Latin.

Take a clear empty plastic bottle and cut the top off. Stick it upside down as per picture below, you can see how effective they are. Make several and hang them where you are getting wasp problems. The cheap lager and jam are mixed together and put into the bottom and act as an attractant for wasps but not bees. These high efficiency traps don't allow any wasps to escape and cost you pennies to make. Of course people with a personal interest in selling you expensive traps will deride these cheaper efficient alternatives so I'd take what they say with a large pinch of salt. Adding a few already dead wasps to them is something worth trying.

 

[Beefriendly]

Okay, let's go with 40Kg which won't be 40Kg.

Wow, you stayed up to 3AM to write even more dribble