- Joined
- Jul 23, 2009
- Messages
- 36,704
- Reaction score
- 17,314
- Location
- Ceredigion
- Hive Type
- 14x12
- Number of Hives
- 6
I have two waspbane traps out and four in stock. Shallows were nadired some time ago so I hope the stores are already up in the brood box
ho sorry I meant they are no more was at a elderly ladies house. treated as in DEAD
Hi Karol,
So far so good on the European Hornet and wasp side the bees have coped well. There is me thinking it is soon all over, so thanks for the heads up. One question please, how many queen wasps does each colony produce for overwintering?
Hello Toby.
WO, not meant to criticise !, although reading my clumsily worded post can see it looked like it, really just interested in the "where" and "how" of getting rid of the colony.
I had a HUGE colony last year in my suburban back garden, decided had to go due to my two little kids, tried every organic method I could .
Tried to drown them, ramming hose into opening ( in compost heap ), tried to bury them, tried to douse the nest with bucket fulls of a nuclear concoction of vinegars, tabasco sauce, chile powder !!! ( got off internet ) ... Was like Curry Night for them, not a bother to them.
Did all this by at night by torchlight in a state of near panic, each time thinking I was gonna be mugged by thousands of them poring out of the nest !
On one especially clumsily executed hose drowning escapade, after ramming the hose into the entrance and seeing some piling out ready to attack. I turned to flee and got my feet tangled up in the coiled hose and fell into a Gooseberry bush !!
So hence my interest in how you approached it ( hopefully and probably better than me !"
Do believe though they themselves are fascinating creatures ( and where they pose no immediate danger !! ) , which they did obviously in your case, should be left alone as they are a vital part of the ecosystem.
Cheers
Brian.
About 2 months ago I lost a nuc to wasps and was emptying the wasp traps almost every day there was that many of them about. I put my traps on top of the hives, my logic is that the wasps will find the hives and that if they meet resistance at the entrance then they will go for the easy stuff in the traps above. There were so many about that I was sitting at the kitchen table with the swatter killing them as they flew in the open door.
Then it stopped! I haven't seen any for about 5 weeks but am under no illusions that they won't be back in force. I've bought more wasp traps and will be closing up the entrances very soon. In the past I've seen wasps at the bottle bank in mid December and I think this will be one of those years.
Very soon this forum will be awash with "Help wasps!" threads.
One thought has just occurred to me. Those who have nadired supers, have you just put the sweet stuff closer to the entrance and will this invite the wasps??
There are so many interesting facets to your post Torq!
First off it is entirely possible that the wasps that were bothering your hives in August were nuisance wasps that had been displaced from their nests as a result of nest eradication activities in your area rather than wasps from a matured nest..
It is also possible that wasps in your area may have gone into a second procreative cycle. This is unusual but we have witnessed this a couple of times and interestingly on both occasions it heralded cold and harsh winters (by UK standards). Probably just co-incidence but interesting nevertheless..
``If you were emptying your traps on a daily basis then it is quite likely that the traps were adding to your problems rather than helping. There's a world of difference between high and low efficiency traps and interestingly low efficiency traps always kill more wasps than high efficiency traps but they rarely succeed in protecting hives quite simply because they attract more wasps than they kill..
It's true that wasps will take the path of least resistance and will therefore go into traps rather than try to gain access to a defended hive. BUT and there is a massive BUT, low efficiency wasp traps that encourage swarm feeding by failing to kill scouting wasps at the first time of asking, create a swarm of wasps in the vicinity of the hive. When the trap ceases to become available to wasps for example when it dries out or there as so many wasps that the wasps can't get to the food or it topples over or spoils, then what happens to that ready made swarm of wasps? They all collectively then go on to attack the hive and it is far harder for a hive to deal with a concerted attack from a swarm of wasps rather than bat away individual scouting wasps.
Thanks Karol. I do apologise, but I have hovered up a wasp nest which seems to have become very active last week despite me thinking previously they were dwindling to nothing. Reading the posts since my query, I am very glad of my action. Took 40 minutes and I would guess 2,000 plus wasps.
It's rural Ireland. Bar throwing a can of petrol on a wasps nest there is no one interested in wasp nest eradication so it's highly unlikely anyone was doing such in the local area. The nearest houses to the hives are well over 300m away and no one in any of them were destroying nests.
You are making an assumption...
that I am using low efficiency traps. Ok maybe I am but I have one set up outside the kitchen window and as I spend all day sitting at the kitchen table (working on my laptop) and I have seen plenty of wasps enter but I've never seen one get out, not one. I've watched wasps wander around underneath the lid but none have made it to the entrance. These are the ones I use.
Due to their design the traps don't dry out, any moisture condenses on the lid and falls back in. They don't fall over as they don't have the high center of gravity like a plastic bottle trap It's no problem for me to wander the 300m to the hives a couple of times a day to have a look and see what's going on.
I've yet to see a swarm of wasps near any of the traps, just the occasional one or two looking for the entrance which would lead me to believe they were being effective. By your logic, if they were inefficient there's be swarms of wasps about.
I love these wasp discussions!!
I hate these wasps, ive had so much trouble with wasps this year, there's nests all over the area, two in different neighbours garage roofs both inaccessible, one in a crack in a nearby tree that's also proving difficult to eradicate, ive had one in the garden they have been and still are a pain in the neck (to put it politely!!) one hive had literally hundreds of wasps attacking it. Ive tried all the tricks in the book glass screen in front of the hive, narrowing it down to a tiny entrance, putting a tube in all made no difference.
Thank god winters coming !, I don't really mean that.
however its been a good year all the same. I meant to enter some honey shows but that didn't happen either due to that TLWMBO !!!!!!!!!!!! laying down the law!
its a cracking hobby though
Dave
Still no wasps on the ivy or at the hives.
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