I like to think I'm normally live and let live in my attitude to most things. But this year the wasps have been so bad I've had to do something about them.
I had a plum tree come ready , and they were delicious but the last few days we can't get near the tree for the sheer number of wasps on them.
I've already removed one nest from the roof of my shed, but I've decided to put up some wasp traps around the small holding, especially near the bees where I've witnessed them going in and robbing them. We've made the entrances smaller, but it does feel like we should help them out more.
I made a homemade trap, which filled in a few days (from an old pop bottle), but I've also bought 8 plastic traps which you fill with an attractant, I'm looking forward to seeing how these do.
I know they're essential to the ecosystem, but there is just too many this year!
Have you found wasps bad this year? What do you do to combat them?
They ate all my pears - there were only four as it's a young tree - now they are munching the figs - horrible things.
ReplyDeleteI covered my young cherry tree from the birds raiding a bumper crop but the wasp could get in. I harvested them a basket at a time while the wasps ate away recon they had a third of the crop! What attractant do you use in the traps my usual of jam,honey,cider doesn't seem to work well Su
ReplyDeleteFortunately we don't have them in the numbers you describe. But I still go out once a month or so early in the morning and scrape their homes from the eaves and other places they build them around our house and then step on the entire works when it lands on the ground.
ReplyDeleteKev, they always seem to be worse in hot years.
ReplyDeleteAt my parents' place, we would have to make regular patrols around the house and knock down nests as soon as we found them. For particularly big ones, we would hit them at night, when the wasps are relatively dormant.
Not so far this year, thank goodness! You've probably noticed that insects seem to have their ebb and flow over the years. One year we were bombarded with ants, another year it was spiders with spider webs everywhere. One year it was indeed wasps. I'm guessing those bad years (bad for humans, anyway) are peak population years that cycle into a dispersion of some sort.
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