Wasp Bane traps

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I'm not getting into any arguments about the running of this forum!
Mark is the ultimate authority .
Plastic policemen faze me not :D

VM

I totally agree - Marks rules, up to him to enforce them.

What I did was pose a question. This is a discussion forum after all.:)
 
I understand and believe or not I'm not here to advertise. I noticed on google that your blog raised the issue of 'WB' and I thought I might be of some help to those of you that have had and are likely to have a problem with wasps. At the end of the day, this is about protecting bees and no disrespect intended but the bee keeping market is dwarfed by our main market of protecting human health so there isn't actually a big commercial incentive for me to get involved. I know that that won't allay the concerns of those of you that are skeptical about me but I would just ask that you give me a chance to earn your trust so that I can show you that I am actually a 'benevolent' friend of the bee keeping fraternity. I have done a number of talks to local bee keeping associations and never accepted expenses from any of them.

There are lots of factors which affect successful wasp management. Understanding wasp behaviour is key to all of them. I've already explained that wasp colonies send out scouting wasps which recruit fellow wasps when they find food and this results in swarm feeding (which is why it is critical to kill 100% of scouting wasps to prevent swarm feeding). It is also important to understand that wasps communicate food location equally as effectively as bees. They have a similar 'dance' with wing vibration and navigate to within millimetres of the food source (they also terrain navigate - clever little b****rs). Given that wasps are efficient biological insects, when they find food, they will keep returning to it to the exclusion of all other food sources until that food source is fully consumed. Given the way that wasps navigate, and communicate food location, you might be interested to know that moving a hive, even by just a couple of feet, may save it from wasp predation, as might rotating the hive entrance by 90 degrees. Quite simply because wasps returning to the original position of the hive entrance won't then be able to find it so easily. I gather hives are periodically moved by some bee keepers to take advantage of different flowering 'crops' but I don't pretend to understand all of the intracacies of moving a hive even a short distance. Nevertheless it may be worth trying if you have a nasty wasp problem. (This normally requires another additional step to deliver a complete solution but I promised I wouldn't advertise so I won't say any more).

Best wishes,

Karol
 
Hi Karol,
I personally don't have a problem with the useful information you have provided. The only reason I raised it as an issue is because many others in a similar situation to you have come under intense scrutiny on the forum and, IMO, it's only fair that everyone is treated the same.
I believe it's important that these issues are discussed out in the open.

Andy.
 
I have nothing to hide so being in the open is cool.

Another tit-bit for you. Did you know that eradicating wasp nests at the wrong time of year increases the number of nuisance wasps? This is all to do with sentry behaviour, grant of access and dietary behaviour. Happy to bore you with an explanation if you'd like?



Best wishes,

Karol
 
Karol,

If the hive can be rotated or moved a short distance to confound a wap attack, are you implying that wasps don't leave a pheromone marker on hives they are attacking...?
 
Can't speak for anyone else, Karol, but I find your posts fascinating. Informing us of and explaining wasp behaviour in the context of wasp v bee I don't think constitutes advertising. Know thine enemy and all that, please educate me some more.
 
Wasps do leave cuticular peptide trails (a bit like ants) but this tends to be for navigating to nests located in dark places such as attics where there's some distance between the nest and the entrance that they use to get into the attic.

All of the research work that we have done on wasp navigation to specific food locations suggests that wasps do not mark food with pheromones. There has been quite a bit of other research on this where researchers have used different coloured and shaped objects as landmarks for wasp navigation. By changing the relationship between the objects, the researchers have managed to confuse wasp navigation. We've achieved much the same thing by spinning wasps [in a Dyson - hope that's not advertising :) ] and then releasing them. They are completely unable to navigate but their sense of smell is not affected so it's not pheromonal.

We also use roving techniques to interrupt programmed feeding and wasps don't follow the food which suggests that location is not marked by pheromones.

Wasps do release distress pheromones when attacked and it is possible that during a sustained attack at a hive entrance, some of that pheromone marks the hive entrance but the pheromone only lasts for a short while so moving a hive or rotating the entrance should still help. I guess some care has to be taken not to confuse the bees as well? Perhaps moving them at night? Not my area of expertise I'm afraid.

Best wishes,

Karol
 
Karol,
I've often been told that placing a sheet of glass in front of the hive entrace will confuse wasps but the bees will still work out the way in.
I tried it once and could not really see any difference.
Any truth in this?
 
There's one thing I've learned about bee keepers - they keep asking questions that require verbose answers :)

The sheet of glass 'technique' is compromised by factors such as wind direction and flight paths.

There can be as many as 1000 wasp nests per square mile. Researchers have found that wasps may travel up to 2 miles to find food which basically means that any given hive may be predated upon by wasps from 12,500 nests in a 2 mile radius. In practice, competition between nests and biological efficiency significantly reduces the 'operational' distance that wasps travel (it's much harder for wasps to penetrate deeper into foreign territory and still protect their own patch). Nevertheless, this means wasps from a large number of nests may be attacking a hive from any direction and as such their flight paths may very well take them along a tangential path over the top or around the side of the hive so that the glass sheet fails to be an effective obstacle.

We know wasps will attack hives for two reasons - either to rob out grubs (during the wasp colony growth phase of their life cycle) or to rob out honey (during colony decline after the sexual progeny has been released from the wasp nest). Each of these situations requires different strategies. Perhaps I can offer an insight into dealing with the former situation.

If wasps are over powering a hive to get at the grubs in the hive, personally I would try moving the hive and then replace it with an empty hive so that the entrance to the empty hive is in exactly the same position (down to the last millimeter). I would take the roof off of the empty hive and place and secure a glass or perspex sheet over it. Using a narrow slotted box with a downward facing opening at its end I would create a 'tunnel' leading from the entrance. This has two purposes. Firstly to shade the entrance to the empty hive from within so that the entrance still appears dark. Secondly, wasps will find it difficult to leave the hive once trapped. (Don't make the tunnel too deep). Wasps should still enter the empty hive and then become confused and fly towards the light and the glass.

Best wishes,

Karol
 
Wasp deterant

Has anyone seen/used a wasp deterant that is on the market? It is designed to look like a wasps nest - and the idea is that as wasps are terratorial they will see the area is already 'occupied' and keep away. On the face of it - sounds like a great idea to hang one in the garden a few meters away from the bees - but at £12.99 it's quite a lot to pay out as an experiment!

Any comments anyone?

Elaine
 
Has anyone seen/used a wasp deterant that is on the market? It is designed to look like a wasps nest - and the idea is that as wasps are terratorial they will see the area is already 'occupied' and keep away. On the face of it - sounds like a great idea to hang one in the garden a few meters away from the bees - but at £12.99 it's quite a lot to pay out as an experiment!

Any comments anyone?

Elaine

Heard this before but i n the context of a balloon covered in papier mache and painted gray ( a tad cheaper than £12.99) As to whether it would work im guessing over to Karol.
 
Has anyone seen/used a wasp deterant that is on the market? It is designed to look like a wasps nest - and the idea is that as wasps are terratorial they will see the area is already 'occupied' and keep away. On the face of it - sounds like a great idea to hang one in the garden a few meters away from the bees - but at £12.99 it's quite a lot to pay out as an experiment!

Any comments anyone?

Elaine
Seen a picture posted on here with two active wasp nests about 4' apart in a loft :)

VM
 
Last edited:
The theory sounds good but I'm afraid the execution falls short. It is true that wasp nests repel other wasps. However, it's the sentries protecting the nest that do this, not the physical nest itself. We were asked to market such a 'repellant nest' in the UK market on behalf of a US company. We declined because it doesn't work. In fact, if you read the manufacturers' own literature, they say the artificial nest has to be taken down after each use to remain effective! In the original literature we received as part of our evaluation process, (which has since been changed), the wording said something on the lines of 'take down after two hours because wasps aren't stupid!'

The other interesting thing is that if you speak to local pest controllers they will tell you that they frequently treat multiple nests in close proximity to each other in attics spaces etc. One would think that that's a pretty good indicator that artificial repellant nests don't work. In those public amenity sites that have used artificial repellant nests there has been no reduction in sting rates in visitors to those attractions.

Best wishes,

Karol

PS I forgot to say in my previous posting that the reason for using an empty hive as a 'wasp trap' is because it provides an excellent opportunity to reduce the number of problem wasps in the vicinity of the apiary. Failing to eradicate these wasps could see them target another hive elsewhere.
 
To be fair I have been a little disingenuous using the multiple nests in the attic example because it's not entirely an 'honest' argument so I best come clean.

The reason why one can find multiple nests co-existing quite happily in attic spaces is because wasps can't fly in the dark and therefore can't easily defend (or attack) nests in the dark which are located some distance from their entry points. In such instances, invariably the entry points to these nests may be many feet apart such that the sentries aren't threatened by their neighbouring wasps and so they live in relative peace.

It's not quite so common to find wasp nests so close to each other in open (visible) proximity. Incidentally, this only applies to vespinae wasps. Polistes wasps behave completely differently and thankfully we don't get these in the UK.

Nevertheless, it still doesn't change the fact that artificial repellant nests don't work. One of the major broad sheets (I can't remember if it was the Times or the Telegraph) tested them last year and then slated them this year.

Best wishes,

Karol
 
Karol

May i thank you for all the great information that you have been giving us on here. I had never thought about wasps before in that way. now i have a bit of a different question/problem. where i work i have a big compost heap where i have put some very ripe fruit, over the past few weeks i have noticed there is more and more wasp activity on it. now this is not a problem for bees as i dont have any there yet, next year maybe, but it is in school grounds.

tomorrow i will be putting up some traps for the summer holidays to try and deal with them. if they have found such a good food source will they build a nest close to it this late in the season or will they target the area next year?

we had a underground nest last year in the grounds which was delt with by a contract company at a high cost to us. where could i get the powder they used if i find a nest to deal with?
 
Karol

May i thank you for all the great information that you have been giving us on here. I had never thought about wasps before in that way. now i have a bit of a different question/problem. where i work i have a big compost heap where i have put some very ripe fruit, over the past few weeks i have noticed there is more and more wasp activity on it. now this is not a problem for bees as i dont have any there yet, next year maybe, but it is in school grounds.

tomorrow i will be putting up some traps for the summer holidays to try and deal with them. if they have found such a good food source will they build a nest close to it this late in the season or will they target the area next year?

we had a underground nest last year in the grounds which was delt with by a contract company at a high cost to us. where could i get the powder they used if i find a nest to deal with?

Lots of great questions. I hope you don't mind but I'm going to split out my answers to make reading a little easier.

Best wishes,

Karol
 
Karol

May i thank you for all the great information that you have been giving us on here. I had never thought about wasps before in that way. now i have a bit of a different question/problem. where i work i have a big compost heap where i have put some very ripe fruit, over the past few weeks i have noticed there is more and more wasp activity on it. now this is not a problem for bees as i dont have any there yet, next year maybe, but it is in school grounds.

Management of compost heaps requires a little understanding of wasp feeding behaviour. The dietary requirements of 'wasps' is predicated almost entirely on their life cycle. Adult wasps have mouth parts that only allow for 'liquid' feeding and much like bees, this liquid sustinance has to be high in carbohydrates because wasp flight consumes a vast amount of energy. Queen wasps coming out of hibernation get this from nectar and are therefore pollinators of flowers in the early spring. Wasp grubs on the other hand require protein to grow. Adult wasps therefore hunt other insects (and scavenge for carrion) to feed their grubs. The exoskeleton of insects is made from chitin (n-acetylglucosamine) which is a complex sugar. The grubs 'digest' this chitin and convert it into simple sugars which they re-feed back to their adult wasps. Wasp nests mature when they release their sexual progeny afterwhich the resident queen stops laying eggs which means there are no grubs left to feed the adult wasps. It is at this point that wasps apparently change their feeding behaviour and 'visibly' come after sweet foods;- invariably fruit, honey in hives and whatever sweet foods we adorn our alfresco dining experience with. Importantly, wasps were here before humans and in nature they have evolved to co-exist symbiotically with fruit trees. In attacking fruit, wasps don't 'eat' the fruit. Their mouth parts don't allow it. Instead they gouge the fruit with their mandibles to release the juice which they drink. The flesh of the fruit falls to the ground to fertilize the ground ready for the fruit seeds. So wasps (in nature) play an important part in fruit tree procreation. I tend to regard wasps as nature's gardener. They pollinate fruit trees in spring, then keep the trees free from insect pests, then harvest the fruit. I wonder at the marvels of nature (and greatly respect wasps as an incredibly important insect and natural asset).

Now, back to compost heaps. Compost heaps provide ideal hunting grounds for wasps because of the high volume of insects that gather there. These hunting wasps (i.e. during colony founding and colony growth phases of the wasp life cycle) aren't so noticeable because they are constantly flitting back to their nests and therefore rarely swarm feed at the heap. (You might be surprised to know that an average wasp nest will eradicate between 4 to 5 metric tonnes of insect pests in a year!). There's very little that can or should be done to stop wasps hunting at compost heaps because in reality this isn't a problem.

Later on when wasps convert to sweet feeding after nest maturation, compost heaps become a problem when, as in your case, fruit is put on them. As I've already mentioned, wasps swarm feed around sweet foods (which is a defensive strategy employed by wasps competing with other wasp colonies). Wasps also programme feed. In other words, they will keep returning to the same food source until it is consumed to the exclusion of other food sources within the vicinity. This presents you with a problem. Given that the wasps have already found the fruit in the compost heap, they will ignore your traps. If you then use low efficiency traps (dome traps, oak stump traps, pop bottle traps and jam jar traps etc) you will merely attract more wasps to the traps without dealing with those wasps already at the compost heap which will merrily continue ignoring your traps. So you will get the worst of both worlds. My advice is quite simple. Don't use traps in this situation because they are not warranted. Instead, you have to break the programmed sweet feeding behaviour of the wasps visiting the compost heap. How do you do that? Simple, cover the fruit with more 'non-sweet' compost. Once covered, the wasps won't be able to get to the fruit which will stop swarm feeding and end of problem. A little bit of sweat but a cheaper and more effective solution.

Best wishes,

Karol
 
Karol

if they have found such a good food source will they build a nest close to it this late in the season or will they target the area next year?

Wasp populations do reflect available food sources. However, given that the compost heap and more importnatly the fruit, have probably been in place for some time, I doubt very much that moving the fruit from their plants/trees a short distance to a heap will make any substantive difference to the existing wasp population dynamics. So in that respect, I shouldn't worry.

What I would suggest however, is that if the fruit is not to be consumed then one way to avoid a wasp problem is to harvest the fruit before it ripens remembering to cover it in the compost heap as previously posted. (The fruit may still ripen on the heap so it's best still to cover it).

Incidentally, wasps don't feed in close proximity to their own nests. They normally only start to feed some 30 - 40 yards from their nest and as posted before, the heap could be 'targetted' by wasps from as many as 12,500 nests in a 2 mile radius! So the best thing is not to attract wasps in the first place.

Best wishes,

Karol
 

Latest posts

Back
Top