This is my favorite kind of yellowjacket trap. The plastic part can be saved and reused year-to-year, and the lure inside can be purchased anew at the beginning of wasp season. They are safe for the environment because the lure is not a poison or insecticide–it is just a compound that mimics a pheromone that yellowjackets are attracted to. Once inside the one-way trap, the yellowjackets cannot find their way back out. They eventually die of dehydration.
Yellowjackets trapped.
The lures last about ten weeks and attract twelve different species of yellowjacket (Vespula). The pheromone is quite genus-specific; in several years of using the traps I have never seen a bee end up in one.
I usually hang the traps in the trees away from the bee hives about mid-August or whenever I notice the yellowjacket population increasing. The ten-week lure takes me into mid- or late October and by that time the first freeze has occurred. A good freeze takes care of any remaining yellowjacket adults, so you are then free of them until the next fall.
Since I began using the traps I haven’t lost any hives to yellowjackets. The year before I bought the traps I lost three hives to yellowjackets, one here and two at an out-apiary . . . and it was a gruesome sight. Since then, I’ve been an enthusiastic supporter of trapping the wretched little bee-eating monsters.
I have yet to find a good use for a live yellowjacket, so dead works for me.
Rusty
I’ll have to get one of those if the wasps get bad. I haven’t seen many yellow jackets this year (so far). I’ve noticed a few black & white wasps hanging around, but no major trouble around the hive entrances yet. All of my hives seem strong enough to defends themselves anyway. Very pleased with that.
I noticed some dragonflies hanging around the hives last week. I assumed they were chowing down on a few bees. They swooped down right over the hives like Spitfires. They weren’t around for long though.
Oh, come on now! Yellowjackets have their place too. How about this: they eat the caterpillars that could defoliate the trees that you get paid to have your bees pollinate!
Touché. I never disliked them until I got honey bees.
Put out yellow jacket traps!!!!
Yesterday I was propping up apple tree branches and stepped on a yellow jacket hive. Never saw it. Must have stomped it pretty well. Ended up with (best count) 26 yellow jacket stings. They make honey bees feel like loving babies. Only stung by our two honey bee hives twice so far this year. One over achiever actually stung my finger through my bee gloves. Have to give her an A for effort. She was really working at digging her stinger in.
Put out those yellow jacket traps!!! In the spring you may capture some yellow jacket queens. I got lazy this year and just recently put two traps out. Usually put them out in the spring. We started doing this before we got bees. They can be REALLY nasty.
As an aside, we have had MANY more bumble bees this year than ever before. Hundreds of them working the flower garden. We have planted bee friendly flowers and herbs (in the flower and herb garden and elsewhere). With this wet spring, maybe that made a difference. Also lots of butterflies this year. The honey bees are working the mint hard right now. It grows around the trees we water with a sprinkler.
One more honey harvest before we settle them in for the winter. We hope.
Thanks for your rational blog.
Rraymond- I’m so excited to hear you talking about planting bee-friendly flowers! Native bees need all the help we can give them, and whatever you do for them is good for your honey bees too! I recently did a post on my blog about helping native pollinators that you might be interested in (http://www.pollinators.info/archives/helping-pollinators). You might also like the Pollinator Partnership Regional Planting Guides- you give them your zip code, and they give you a free booklet with pollinator-friendly plants for your region! Check it out on their site here: http://www.pollinator.org/guides.htm
I bought a wasp trap today. I had to add apple juice and yellow jacket lure.
It’s been hanging up for about an hour and already one bee is trapped inside.
I think I picked the wrong wasp trap.
Can you send me an email with a link to the one you’re using?
Phillip,
Go to http://www.rescue.com. But I think if you use the pheromone lure without the apple juice you would be good to go. Or use a piece of meat instead of apple juice. The sweet juice is the problem.
That’s what I thought. Next time I listen to my own know-how.
Hi Rusty,
I’m not a yellowjacket expert by any means, but I’ve learned over the years that what works best for us is to get these traps up NOW! The first warm days of spring the queens come out of hibernation and are looking for a nesting site. You can tell the queens from the workers because just like honey bees the queens are almost twice their size. If you catch the queens now before they can establish their nest it greatly reduces the yellow jacket problem in August, September & October. We’ve found that if you wait until then to put the traps up you’re fighting a losing battle. In 2010 I caught 8 queens in our traps in spring and had very few yellow jackets that year. Last year we had a long, cool, wet spring and putting the traps up just slipped my mind. I didn’t get them up until June or July and we had more of an issue with them. There are also lots examples of homemade traps you can make from plastic milk jugs on the net. Right now they really want protein, so a small piece of meat works as an attractant. In late summer/early fall they want sugar (honey).
Darla
Darla,
Good advice. See the April 7 post, “It’s time to think about wasps.”