Holy cow. I need a yellow jacket trap or something.

[Tom Chaudoir]

Anybody have good instruction on how to make a yellow jacket jar trap? I could really use it. Why?

Well, today seemed like a good day to dust the girls with powdered sugar. This time I didn't take the hive apart. Just pulled the covers and put the sugar into a screen basket and agitated with a little paint brush. The sugar sifts in. Then I used the brush to clear the frame tops. Nice. Lots of ghost bees flying around.

Then all hell broke loose. There were so many bees in the air I had to step back. I really wanted to put the covers back on, but they were crawling all over the box and I didn't want to crush them.

Then I finally noticed that a lot of the bees on top of the open frames were not bees. There was one heck of a battle going on.

I smoked the top really heavy and the yellow jacket numbers seemed to fall. Then I brushed what I could from the inner cover and put it on as gently as possible. Some of the girls were still probably lost.

Once closed, things calmed down. Now I'm afraid to open my hives. I need a wasp nuke that won't kill my bees. Yellow jackets love fish, so that's my bait of choice. So how do I convert some mason jars or something? Thanks in advance.

[ August 23, 2006, 10:25 PM: Message edited by: Tom Chaudoir ]

[JohnK and Sheri]

I don't think you need a wasp nuke as much as just not leaving the top of the hive open with clouds of sugar wiffing around. This is almost guaranteed to start robbing. Especially when there is not much nectar coming in, that sugar is a pretty big temptation. Getting the cover back on is probably the best way to control/prevent robbing. If not yellow jackets robbing, it could have been bald face hornets or maybe even other honeybees. You can't kill them all, or shouldn't. They have a place in the environment too.
The longer the cover stays off the harder it is to close, especially if robbing gets started. If you sort of ease the cover down and 'settle it' slowly before letting it down entirely, the bees will move out of the way. It is hard to explain but I hardly crush any bees with the cover. They just move out of the way.
Sheri

[Tom Chaudoir]

Hi Sheri,

There really were not clouds of sugar wafting around. In the past I used the varroa blaster. That involves taking the hive apart and dusting every frame. The method that I used today just sifts sugar down between the frames. The coverage isn't what I'd like, but it's a lot less work and the hive isn't open to yellow jackets for so long.

These rascals are not hornets or other honey bees robbing. There are always at leat 50 yellow jackets hanging around all the time.

It's normal for a loaded, tired bee to make it almost back to the hive but fall short. She sits in the grass and breathes hard for a couple of minutes, then gains the entrance. With my hives, taking a breather is certain death. The yellow jackets take the girls apart and ferry them off. The bees only survive if they make it to the entrance on the first try. Yellow jackets are on patrol scanning the ground around the hive. They are poking around looking for a way in.

I don't think that the wasps were drawn by the sugar. They were after meat and I gave them a way in by removing the cover.

Sure wasps have a place in the envorinment. More power to them. Go eat some dead fish or Mountain Dew. There's a nest around here somewhere that's concentrating on my bees for food.

I'll look around for jar traps in the stores tomorrow if nobody has a good home brew. Either way, this has to stop. I can't open my hives.

[balhanapi]

You can suspend a piece of fish/meat over a shallow pale of water. mix some soap/detergent in the water to lower the surface tension. The yellow jackets will fall in the water after tearing off heavy pieces of meat and drown. Or you can punch a hole in the lid of a glass jar which has a neck narrower than the body, smear some vaseline on the inside of the jar neck, fill the jar with water and put a meat piece inside.They cant get out and will drown. i hav'nt tried these but they sure r advised by experts. Good luck

[balhanapi]

here'z one link http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7450.html

[Doug R]

Tom,

That many yellow jackets may be a sign of a hive with a problem such as mites. I am experiencing this right now. My hives are in my backyard. The YJ traps sold in stores just don't seem to catch them. If anything, they may attract YJs to the area (as someone pointed out to me in another post) where they are more interested in my bees. Every morning and evening I swat about 20 to 25 YJs with a fly swatter. It only takes a couple of minutes because when you swat one, the others all come to investigate. Swat swat swat! It reduces the stress on the hive and me!

Doug

[ August 24, 2006, 02:20 AM: Message edited by: Doug R ]

[power napper]

Tom--I have soda bottle and apple juice bottle bait traps hanging in my bee yard and also under my grape vines where I sit. I think that there are instructions on this site for making them. We cut a one inch round hole into the side of the bottle with a utility knife.
Mix a cup of vinegar, cup of sugar, cup of water and put into the bottle with one bannana skin peel!
My traps get filled with yellow jackets, bald faced hornets, wax moths etc. Works for us.

[2rubes]

Hi, I just tried this trap with plastic jars and 1/2 pvc pipe and http://dealdevil.tripod.com/page13.html

and baited it with cat food and it works great. Be sure to use clear plastic, not frosted like Milk jugs. It's trapping yellow jackets and meat bees, not hornets. I'm going to try this mixture next '1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, ½ cup vinegar and finally 1 banana peel. Wait a few days till it starts to ferment' and see if it attracts hornets.
When we had varroa last year, YJ flew off with all of the disabled bees with chewed wings. Never saw them take a healthy bee, but the hornets are. They hang around the water and ambush live healthy bees. A fly swatter now sits next to the bee pool. They are easy to kill, they are so focused on the bees.
Janet

[JohnK and Sheri]

Wow, I am glad I never had this much trouble. I see one at a time sometimes, never had an invasion! Sounds like half the YJ in Wisconsin are down by you.
Good luck,
Sheri

[tarheit]

I've used several the plastic cell protectors inserted into holes in a 2 liter bottle as a yellow jacket trap. For bait I use watered down burnt honey from processing wax cappings. I haven't invested in a wax melter so I pile them in stock pots, fill the voids with water and melt them down. The dark honey water attracts the yellow jackets like crazy but the bees don't seem to interested in it.

-Tim

[ August 24, 2006, 11:25 AM: Message edited by: tarheit ]

[Sundance]

Isn't a sweet trap lure going to kill alot
of bees???? I would like to put a dent in
them here too but I have been afraid of the
bottle traps for that reason.

[shylock3]

I did the 2 lieter pop bottle yesterday morning hoping to catch wax moths. 1inch hole below shoulder, bait is banana peel, cup of sugar, cup of venigar, cup of water. Only got 1 wax moth, but I got a bunch of yellow jackets. I saw no trapped honeybees. This might help with your yellow jackets

[Tia]

We had a bad year a couple of years ago. YJs were everywhere. My 70+ friend said he'd never seen them so bad! Anyway, the lure I used it the 2-litre bottle again, but Pepsi (has to be Pepsi, not Coke--don't ask me why' I'm just telling you what I was told) with a piece of meat suspended from the entrance hole. I used a piece of leftover steak one time, baloney the next. They both worked just fine.

[SilverFox]

Tom; The 2-liter pop bottle is cheap and effective
I use them with great success. Just below the slope of the bottle make 4 opposing holes approx the size of your thumb, I use cheap root beer in the bottom and/or a piece of smoked turkey breast lunch meat suspended in the bottle. At certain times of their life they are looking for sweet items for existence and later in the season they need large amounts of protein for their brood. I'll use a combation of both for maxium effect. You also can use the meat and just put about an inch of water with a drop of dish soap for a quicker demise, the soap will break the surface tension of the water.
;) FYI, If you find the hive and knock it down (for paper wasps and hornets) spray the area with WD-40 they'll never return to the area sprayed, a person I know that collects wasps, hornets for reseaerch doesn't like me telling people of that fact, I guess only because it works. ;)
I like that one that 2rubes posted, you can probialy get the jars from a Goodwill store or any other type of 'used house hold items' for pennies on the dollar.
I gonna make those of 2 rubes.
:D DEATH TO YELLOW JACKETS :D

[Tom Chaudoir]

Thanks so much to everyone for the ideas. I'll be putting some bottles out tomorrow.

The bait? Let's not take chances. Sugar, vinegar, soap, soda, apple cider, a banana peel, and a hanging fish. (Easy on the sugar.) The menu should have something for everyone but the bees. If I had some nasty old honey from wax meltings I'd add that too.

The guy in the bait store will have a good story to tell. Some guy came in and bought one fat minnow and said to just put it in a plastic bag with no water. smile.gif

I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks again.

[SilverFox]

If you use honey you'll also attract BEES, try the root beer/smoked turkey meat (lunch meat).
IMHO, DON'T USE HONEY, even if it is old and nasty, bees will still come to it.

[JohnBeeMan]

>>>Isn't a sweet trap lure going to kill alot
of Bees????

That is the reason for adding the banana peel. The banana smell is the same as the alarm scent of the honey bee, so they stay away.

[notaclue]

shylock3,

That's what I've been using since last summer. I tried cold water and sugar but it didn't attract the yj's as well as using boiling hot water. It seemed to smell different to me also. The 1 cup vinegar keeps the bees out. I learned this when I forgot to add it to one of my traps and had a bunch of bees attempting the bee paddle in their first olympic qualifications trials.

After I realized what happened I rescued as many as possible, added the apple cider vinegar and went back to killing wasps, flies and moths. I've replaced traps four times this summer and not killed a single bee with them. I've watched the wasps and hornets go right past a hive and go for the bottles.

[SilverFox]

Just checked my YJ traps this afternoon and found 2 bald face hornets in them :D using root beer. :D

[Dennis D.]

Tom,
We had bad yellow jackets one year to the point that we could hear them bouncing off the screen door and hood vent when frying bacon. We used the bacon (uncooked) suspended across a bucket of water with a string. The bacon was about 3/4" over the water. We added liquid soap and oil to the water and were amazed at the number of yellow jackets the next few days that were dead. Hundreds.

Dennis

[ August 25, 2006, 11:00 PM: Message edited by: Dennis D. ]

[shylock3]

I'm using 2 pop bottles, 1 clear 1 green. 15ft apart. I don't know why but the clear is catching twice as many yj's and wax moths as the green one.

[Tom Chaudoir]

Bacon was just what I used. It saved me a trip to the bait store. After a couple of hours it had just one drowned YJ, but I figured the bacon would warm up and start to smell. That was yesterday.

Checking it today, I learned a lesson. Don't put the bottle on the ground. During the night some critter wanted bacon for breakfast.

Revision B will hang from a branch. smile.gif

[Michael Bush]

http://www.beeworks.com/informationcentre/wax_moth.html

This is a good trap.

[HarryVanderpool]

We keep 5 traps going around the homesite and in our nuc yard until first frost.
I don't care for most of the home-made designs for traps because they are hard to clean. The traps must be kept clean and with fresh bait or they become useless after about 2 - 3 days.
We bait our traps with cheapy tuna fish. Just a few pinches. They vaccuume up several hundred each day.
Here is a pic:
http://orsba.proboards27.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1155762976&page=1

[Dwight]

I don't understand why people kill yellow jackets, especially beekeepers! they have their place in nature just as all the other critters do. I am sure with a little research you will find they do much more good than harm and I can't believe they are detrimental to honeybees.
They may take a bee once in a while but probably less than you kill by mistake when working your hives.

[SilverFox]

Dwight: I've seen them desecrate a hive by working from the outer combs inward, I had a hive that was weak and was waiting to combine, when I went into the hive, after chasing hundreds of YJ out of it, the SBB was completely covered with bee heads and only 2 frames of bees left out of 20 frames, the hive had dwindled down to 5 when I made the decision to combine, I was hoping to wait till after pulling all my supers to combine, but the YJ's forced me to do other wise. Now the combined hives have been disrupted during the last part of the flow.
If you watch the YJ's they enter off to a side and start with the workers on the outer frames, one YJ goes and brings back two and so on until they over whelm the remaining bees.
During the summer they need the honey for their flight muscles and late summer the need the protein to feed their brood, IMHO, the latter is when they are the most destructive, and vicious.

[Dwight]

Wow!! I have never had any problems with yellow jackets, didn't know they caused so much damage!!

[xC0000005]

I know some wasps have a sybiotic feeding relationship with their brood - the adult feeds the brood chewed insect and the brood feeds the adult a sweet liquid. Is that the common method or are there wasps that actually eat the protein themselves instead of feeding it to the brood?

[Tom Chaudoir]

Hi Dwight,

I understand what you mean. I don't step on bugs. Spiders in the house are welcome. If there is a moth in the house, I capture it and let it go.

The yellow jackets are something else. My 2 hives are under constant attack. I can't open them. The YJs have made a full time occupation of my hives. The surplus isn't enought to bother taking off.

[Dwight]

Ha Ha Ha, Tom I do the same thing! Any time I find any insect in my house I catch it and release it outside, drives my wife crazy!
We do have some yellow jackets around but they have never bothered my hives. Maybe we don't have the vicious strain in this area.
I did see some kind of insect grab one of my bees and fly off with it once but that was an isolated incedent.

[SilverFox]

:D DEATH TO YELLOW JACKETS :D
I to will release a harmless insect back outdoors, paperwasps included, BUT, YJ's and flys they receive the ultimate fate, not to mention fleas and ticks, and various other vermin.

[ August 29, 2006, 02:50 PM: Message edited by: SilverFox ]

[xC0000005]

God help the lawyers around your house. smile.gif

[SilverFox]

ROFL,you got it, they don't make it past the dogs ;) , and they really stop to look at the headstones in the yard, like the one that reads "HERE LIES LESTER MOORE, TWO SHOTS FROM A 44, NO LESS, NO MORE" (ripleies belive it or not). Unless they want me to serve papers for them on someone else :D . Like a YJ. ;)

[ August 29, 2006, 04:46 PM: Message edited by: SilverFox ]

[2rubes]

This is so funny. I always remove spiders and respect their nest, and had never killed a living thing with the exception of ants.....and then, gophers. Years ago, I was working in the garden and I watched my garlic wiggle a bit, and zip, disappear. We had an old 22 and I demand my husband load it for me. I must of sat on a bucket watching that garlic for hours, before my husband came out to check on me. 'Did you know the safety's on?' I had no idea what a safety even was. Never did shoot a goper. We started to trap them, but I couldn't empty the traps. Now, we have feral cats that we train to eat in the garden, mostly feed them around gopher activity. "Gophers, ticks, fleas and ants, and now hornets and YJ's....excempt from karma!"
Dwight, I didn't realized that the hornets where taking off with the bees around the pond and in the garden, I never sat and watched them long enough. Took a 16 year old boy to point it out to me. Now around the hives, I would watch YJ take away disable bees, but they haven't attacked the hives, probably too strong.
Janet

[Jeff McGuire]

I guess I shouldn't mention that I have a Mosquito magnet here or people might stone me for mass killings of them nasty little suckers :D

[ August 29, 2006, 06:45 PM: Message edited by: Jeff McGuire ]

[xC0000005]

I had wasps build a nest in my grill when I was on vacation. What a nasty surprise that was when I went out to cook. Of course, not nearly as bad as the kitten.

2rubes - We had gophers. I killed one with a pitchfork. My wife was not amused even though they had destroyed the garden. She tried to let a mouse out of the trap the other day and the little bugger was...ungrateful. She won't do that again.

[2rubes]

Did I miss something about the kitty?
We had yellow jackets make a nest in our dehyrator on our porch. Lucky me, they didn't start coming out until I had it loaded and turned it on. I was walking through the door when I saw a mass of yellow jackets, and made it in just in time. I forgot how my hubbie took care of that (notice who I call when I have a problem), but we had to through out the food.
I'm really a wimp. I had trouble killing queens at requeen time. My first few years, I had made so many nucs trying to save queens. And I couldn't touch them, had to wear gloves. Couldn't squish them, and when I tried to throw a queen on the ground to step on it, she would fly back into the hive. After a few years, realizing I would have to kill the queens, I would put her in a jar, then shake it till dizzy, then I was able to drop her on the ground and step on her. Someone said that was crueler then squishing her.
But you have to requeen to have good hives, after 10 years, I can pick up queens, and send them on their way with way with a sincere thank you prayer.
Janet

[xC0000005]

2rubes - no, I just learned the hard way (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/7/21/191150/910) to always look before I light.<p> I have a tiny hive in the yard right now and the yellow jackets are all over it. Sigh.

[SweetBettyBees]

I'm sorry everyone is having a bad time with the YJ but I'm a little relieved to hear it - this is the first year I've ever had a problem with them and boy are they BAD. First they seemed to just hang around a wait for a dead or deformed bee to hit the ground - now they're diving onto the landing boards and picking fights. Dwight, if by now you've watched a YJ take out a honey bee you know why they're bad news for bees and beeks. I didn't know about the traps - will rig up some tonight. Some of my problem may be coming from the proximity of the worm composter - all insde the electric fence. Probably need to get it out of there. Thanks, everybody.

[Dwight]

I'm not sure I"ve witnessed a YJ taking out a honeybee. Last year I saw a flying insect fly down and pluck a bee off the ground in front of one of my hives and fly off with it.
That is the only time I have witnessed that and I am not sure what the insect was.

[Tom Chaudoir]

Update:

The traps seem to be working somewhat. I've tried some variations, and meat hanging over soapy water is best so far. More traps are better. About half the bugs that drown are yellow jackets. Most of the rest are flies. I'd rather not kill the flies, but can't think of a way to be selective. Sorry, flies.

Things could be worse. Check out this story about YJ in Alabama. (http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060717/NEWS02/607170317/1009) :eek:

Any beeks in Alabama reading this? Do you still have hives?

[JohnK and Sheri]

Tom
I take back anything I ever said or implied poo-pooing your yellow-jacket problem! We picked up some boxes today from near West Bend (Hartford) and I could not believe the wasps of all types, but mostly yellow jackets. They were everywhere and I sympathise! It would be crazy to have to work around that.
Sheri
PS the man we got the boxes from also has about 9 hives of bees he is trying to sell.....