So there are many ideas and theories for yellow jacket and wasp traps out there but i found an idea that i have tested this late summer/early fall that works. Most traps only trap the foragers and maybe if you are lucky a queen but they keep coming. There have been at least a few universities that have experimented with different baits and inecticides to kill the entire nest of wasps, not just the foragers. They all came up with similar results: By taking a can of minced chicken meat or chicken flavor wet cat food and mixing 5% Fipronil into it, the wasps will come into contact with the fipronil, carry it back to the nest and over the course of a couple weeks will have infected the entire nest and by then the fipronil will attck their nervous systems and kill all of them. Larva and all. I used to have such a bad issue with wasps but after a couple weeks they were nearly non existent in my area. Since its meat that the insecticide is mixed with the honey bees will not be attracted to it. Ill set these out with their own stands and covers next spring to prevent any larger animals from getting into them.
I've been looking at live trapping options; meat appears to be best in terms of minimising bee deaths. Not many around now...snow took care of 'em...but come spring I'm going to try a few setups and see what comes of it.
personally, I would poison the yellow jackets and buy chicken feed..how many yellow jackets would you catch in a season to off set feed costs? compared to stings and damage done to the honey bees by the yellow jackets...
I nailed 3 yellow jackets just by flipping the empty syrup bucket over them (bees had all gone home). next day at noon, 3 dead yellow jackets when I went to add a quart
We're not replacing feed with yellow jackets; we're reducing feed costs. The hope is that with a mix of various bug traps, fodder, and using chicken tractors, we can reduce our feed usage 50-60%. Bugs are high protein, so by weight they produce more growth than conventional feed. Given how many wasps we had this year, I imagine we should get a pretty good "harvest".
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