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Barefoot Andrew
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Joined: 21 Mar 2007
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Location: In the 17th century
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oliver90owner
Joined: 11 Jul 2009
Posts: 85
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 Posted: Wed Jan 05, 11 9:54 pm Post subject: |
 
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Is there anything you can do to prevent the situation happening in the first place?
A few things, apart from checking around for very close nests.
First, only run strong colonies for later in the season - any splits should be early, or really strong ones. Reinforce colonies or unite - better to save one than lose two.
Get the entrance reduced well before the threat materialises. Running with OMFs certainly needs less than 100 x 20mm entrance and perhaps as little as a couple bee-ways can be required to deter a bad attack. My Dartingtons have only an 8mm entrance and I reduce that to about 100mm, or less, if wasps needed to be seen off - and that is with resonably strong colonies.
Putting a grill over the full entrance, to reduce the effective area is apparently a good method, especially if the bees then need to go along a tunnel just inside the grill to gain entry into the box - the bees find their way in and out but the wasps spend a lot of time trying to find an entry where they can see bees in the entrance area, but cannot nip in due to the mesh.
Keep the brood nest close to the reduced entrance (I prefer warm way for the frames and would leave the entry point in the centre - as close to the brood nest as possible, so reinforcement bees are close at hand if a wasp gains entry and needs to be subdued, before throwing out the corpse. Certainly do not position the brood nest at the back of a box!
Preventing entry is far better than attempting to stop the attack after the wasps have gained entry.
I only deploy wasp traps when the wasp problem is actually around the hives - no point in attracting wasps to the apiary. Trapping the queens early in the season before her nest hatches the first worker wasps will reduce the potential for later attacks.
Avoid leaving any attactants around - honey comb, feed spills etc.
Wasps have a part to lay as scavengers so are good on balance. They only change into a nuisance when the nest has peaked and the number of worker larvae reduces (they are fed on a 'meat' diet and exude a sugary food for the worker wasps feeding them)
Running several colonies is a definite help as one cannot unite if you only have the one hive, nor can one move across frames of hatching brood, to reinforce a weaker colony, unless one has sufficient depth of reserves. If I needed to unite a couple of colonies I would not be reducing my colony count by anything like 33 or 50%!
If it is one wasp nest where the attack is coming from, dusting the wasps with flour or icing sugar can help to locate the offensive nest.
Hope that gives a few helpful pointers. I have lost colonies to wasps but these days I know what I need to do to prevent the carnage, so have not had any trouble these last few seasons.
Regards, RAB |
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darkbrowneggs
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