14 July 2015

Best trap for yellowjackets



      I've been carrying out a war on the wasps/yellowjackets.

     In the last few years, 'paper' wasps have invaded and while they are fairly well behaved, they will sting. But they're destructive...they insist on building their nests on the wooden soffets of my house and garage and have literally chewed holes in the wood. These wasps are fairly easy to handle: I spray them with a soap solution (Murphy's all purpose oil soap spray is perfect) and then knock down the nests with a long (VERY long) rod.

    It's the yellowjackets that are especially troublesome this year. The species this summer is Vespula pennsylvanica,  or the Western yellowjacket. Unfortunately, there are two unrelated species called the Western, so take your pick as to which is the more aggressive.  We have V.pennsylvanica

    While we had about two weeks of subfreezing temperatures this past winter, we got NO snow. Meaning, none of the pupating queens were killed. Meaning, we have tons of yellowjackets this year, and they absolutely adore the heat wave we're enduring.

   There are many traps on the market. One (in one of the two pictures below)is a plastic bag with a one way only inlet. One puts water into it, it wets a packet of wasp pheromone that is supposed to attract the wasps. They climb in, and eventually get tired and fall into the water and drown.
There's even a graduate on the side to allow you to estimate the number of drowned wasps. It's in the hundreds.
Problem is: it stops being effective after a few days. I don't know if the number of dead wasps dilutes the pheromone, or if the water level has to be kept up (in this heat, it evaporates fairly quickly), but what I think it is is: the wasps appetite.

    Also, it is designed to be thrown in the trash, STILL full of water. One pushes the yellow plastic inlet assembly back into the bag, which seals the bag, but still...it's got water in it. And wasps, some of whom may not be dead but are surely pissed. 

   Adult worker wasps eat only vegetable matter. It may be pollen, it is usually sweet stuff but the adults, when eating for themselves, go vegan.
But they're not eating for themselves. They have hundreds of baby wasps to feed, and like all insects (and most birds), babies need protein...meaning meat. The adults will go for any kind of protein. I once watched three wasps attack a cricket. It was like watching three lions attacking a buffalo. They were all over it, the cricket fought back but was no match. One of them managed to draw blood, managing to pierce the chitinous exoskeleton and expose muscle. Once this happened, the ferocity of the wasps only increased. Once the cricket stopped fighting, they ate it alive. They would remove a chunk, fly off, return (with more wasps), take off a chunk, fly off to the nest, etc. The cricket was alive for most of the ordeal.

   Crickets, like most bugs, are pure protein.
There's a small group of people who insist we need to start eating bugs and stop eating beef. Sorry, no. I will never in my life purposefully eat an insect. I know that there are folks out there who say we should start eating them to save the planet. well, maybe so, but I refuse to eat that far down the food chain. I know what's in bugs..other bugs. I won't eat them. Sorry. I'll go vegan before I go that route.

   Anyway, the second and more effective trap is the reusable 'tube' trap. It's a simple trap.It comes in three pieces. The tube, a cone with a big hole on one end and a tiny one on the other, and a bottom cap that holds the bait but in such a way that the wasps can't get at it. 
The wasp enters the trap from the holes in the bottom of the cap, crawls up the cone, exits the cone through the small hole into the tube and then is trapped. It is too stupid to understand that all it need do is go back down the small hole. Maybe some do escape that way, but they don't learn fast enough.
When you purchase this trap, it comes with a small tube of 'attractant'. It's a heavily scented brown syrup that you are warned do not come in contact with. The wasps go crazy for it. However, only one tube of attractant comes with each trap. They'd love for you to buy more in separate packages, but it's expensive. it's sticky and hard to clean out, and dries out in hot weather, and stops being effective.

   The cap has prongs that one can impale real meat on, once you've gone through the tube of attractant. The maker says to use turkey 'ham'...meaning ham flavored turkey. They also advise using ham, barbecued meat and fish. . But again, meat dries out very quickly and stops attracting the wasps.
 
   I've found the perfect bait. It attracts the wasps like crazy. They ignore the plastic bag trap and go for the tube trap. The bait I use is readily available and doesn't dry out. 

   I use canned cat food.  A teaspoonful in the trap lasts for days, pulling in wasps all the while. I've had to empty a trap three times in three days and it's still pulling wasps. 
 
  

The wasps adore cat food. The stinkier, the better. It's far cheaper than the manufactured attractant and much safer. Plus, my cat eats the rest. 

 How to empty the tube trap without getting nailed?

   After dark, it cools down. In the mornings it's cool enough that the wasps are somnolent and inactive. I'll take a trap down (wearing gloves!) and plunge it in a bucket of water. Any wasps still alive in the trap will drown. I leave them to be dead for a couple hours, then (again, wearing rubber gloves) dump the bucket, remove the trap, clean it out and recharge it with fresh cat food.

  Doing this I estimate I've trapped several hundred yellowjackets.

   They are valuable predators. I, however, refuse to be their prey.


  

 

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