Wasps burrowing into Poly-Feeder.

[Spikedog]

Whereas we are accustomed to wasp attention in the Autumn, this year it is nothing short of plague. They are sharing their attentions but the major focus is as anticipated, upon the weaker Nuc colonies. Noted this evening they had begun to burrow their way into a poly-feeder - a new experience. The feeder is painted with masonry paint. I will use a little glue or filler to soothe out the "tunnels". BUT any advice as to preventative measure to stymie this destructive behaviour?

The old reliable wasp lures have failed this season, with beer, cider, larger and various jam combinations being ignored for the hives. Will have to find something as the frosts are a way off and I don’t see the smaller units holding out.

 

[Anduril]

A sheet of aluminium foil covering the attacked areas or varroa mesh covering the area.

 

[Millet]

Move the Nuc /Hive 3ft to one side and stick a wasp trap where the nuc/hive was..

 

[ShinySideUp]

Weird as this year I am having no trouble from wasps at all. My traps are attracting a certain species of moth (unfortunately) and loads of flies but very few wasps.

I have a theory for this lack of wasps. I have pet rabbits in a big run in the garden and last winter I put a commercial gazebo over the top so that we could clean them out in the rain without getting wet. In the spring I took it down and found about 15 over-wintering queen wasps lurking in the recesses of the roof -- none of them made it out alive. Is this the reason why there are so few wasps about this year, I suspect it is. I think I may put more hidey holes for queen wasps in the gazebo this winter as the more queens I can kill the fewer wasps there will be the next year.

 

[Karol]

Depends on the topography of the land around you. Killing 15 queens is unlikely to dent the wasp population. A full size vespine nest will produce circa 1500 queens of which only one is likely to survive to establish its own mature colony. However, if you are surrounded by open monocultural land then there may be limited hibernation sites in which case killing the queens might have made a difference. I suspect though that wasps in your area are still in their hunting phase and haven't matured yet. It may be that your hives are situated not far from a leisure complex (theme park, zoo, etc) that has adopted integrated wasp management from which you are getting 'herd' protection.

 

[thibault]

Bought 2 traps from Amazon, working a treat, catching hundreds of them in no time. But yes wasp this year for me has been an issue, that's why I decided to buy those traps, now the nucs are chilling out.

Sent from my SM-J710F using Tapatalk

 

[Finman]

Move the Nuc /Hive 3ft to one side and stick a wasp trap where the nuc/hive was..

Wasps are not idiot.

 

[Karol]

Agreed wasps are not idiots which means they have predictable behaviour. One of those behaviours (quite sensibly) is to navigate back to the exact same location where they found food. So moving a hive 3ft to one side will mean that returning wasps will not find the hive because they will travel back to where the hive was. If a trap is then set in that location it will mop up those returning wasps and prevent them from finding the hive again.