Great episode Fred!! Had to laugh when Michael was talking about the Tiger mosquito being day biters. Here in NW Minnesota the skeeters are so bad I have to wear my beekeeping veil during the day, even on hot bright days. In the beeyard, I'm using the veil not for bees, but skeeters. I'm constantly telling other beekeepers to leave the wasps alone if not in a heavy traffic area. They are a great boon to nature and great cleanup crew for the beeyard. Great episode!
I was in Minnesota one summer, their State Bird is the Mosquito! :) I also wear a veil out in the woods during the day when it's been raining. I'm with you, deal with wasps that are in close proximity with the hives or people, otherwise they are awesome :)
What a great episode! I wish I would have watched it sooner. I remember seeing the under eaves area of the garage by the house from the 70's as a kid were completely filled with open air nests of wasp nests. None exist now, there are BB Gun indentions in the wood that I made in the mid 70's when I was a kid shooting at their nests that I can still see today. Those wasps would be taking care of a locust tree issue I have going on now if they were here now. Age seems to bring wisdom, it's strange how times come around. I remember watching and inspecting mud daubers as a kid and seeing them act like they were caught and drawing the spider to them so they could sting and carry them off. I remember taking apart their sealed mud tubes and being shocked by the different spiders I saw, that was before I was even a teenager. Nature is great!
As a gardener, I have a love/hate relationship with wasps and yellow jackets. They do an amazing job of keeping my plants pest free. In fact, I can tell when they start to enter die off at the end of the season because that's when pest numbers explode. But its not always fun for me to share my garden with them. I usually try to work around their working hours. Unfortunately, as a homeschool mom who loves to hike and picnic with her kids when the heat of summer wanes and the schools are back in session, they don't make it very fun for us. In fact, a fellow homeschool friend's young child was recently stung some 15 times by yellow jackets after jumping on a log along the path that had a nest in it.
The nests that show up where children walk/play are removed around here. That's a terrible first wasp experience that many children have. Thanks for commenting.
I watched a video yesterday of a guy who took small wasp nests (small new nests probably like bald faced hornets as they were a paperwasp hanging nests) and fitted them to his fence near his vegetable garden for pest control. What he was doing was he made a tool using a clear plastic container on the end of a broom handle and covered the small nest and knocked it into his container. He then added CO2 to knock them out and separated the wasps from the actual nest adding the unconscious wasps to a mesh sock and sealed it with a peg. He hot glued the nest with young onto the underneath of an L shaped board hanging on his fence and then fitted the open end of the mesh sock to the board over the nest and let the wasps go back to their nest. That night he would remove the mesh from each nest. It was pretty interesting for a biologically aware pest control system. It was from SuburbanBiology
Thank you for sharing! I've learned not so use CO2 to get them under control as is has an impact on their hormones long after that event. So, I just carefully collect and move them without any knockout methods at all. They are surprisingly easy to handle.
I have witnessed a wasp harvesting a spider from an orb web. It dived at the spider and bounced it so that the web was acting like a trampoline. If it doesn’t succeed the first time it does it again until the spider is dislodged and falls to the ground where it attacks and then carries it away! The natural world is amazing! Thanks for your interview with experts series. I love it!!!
Cool! Enjoyed the conversation I put out extracted frames almost no honey beez all yellow jackets Must have been a good flow. I can walk right up to yellow jackets film them in my pajamas .they don't bother me at all. Only thing when the framez are gone the yellow jackets stay for a few days. I had to do stuff out side they get under my glasses close to my ears all over me but no stings! They also wait by my front door because they can smell the honey frames in the hall. Right now they are no threat to my hives. Probably end of the month I'm gonna have to put robbing screens on.
I have Asian tiger mosquitoes here in SE coastal VA, and I get bit all day and all night. When I was a child, mosquito bites would drive me insane with itchiness! Now that I’m a beekeeper and get stung weekly, I don’t even know the mosquitoes are biting.. I no longer react..no pinch, no swelling, no itch!
Did notice that was too late had a huge too deep three medium hive. Harvested 5 gallons of honey. Had the entrance wide open. By the time I noticed the WASP going in and out of the hive The Hive was gone. Queen gun bees gone a handful of bees left. All brood all eggs everything robbed. Then after the WASP came the robber bees. Two other hives right next to it just fine, but had reduced entrance.
I have video of a yellowjacket eating me. I had a massive open wound from sliding into 3rd base, it found it and was chomping away at it lol. I filmed it for a bit.
Dragonflies are my big problem here in SW Oregon, we do have a lot of yellow jackets and ballface here too, but the Dragonflies kill them all, including my honey bees.
Bald Faced Hornets are black and white. There is a Mud-Dauber that is all black but has blue where the sun hits it. Not certain about an all black paper-wasp. Maybe someone else knows.
Im south of you a hour or two in pa this is the first year i seen huge hornets hunting my honey bees right at the entrances i have never seen em before this year there catching my bees and bolting off out of sight with em only doing it here at my house have you ever seen em do this i never have
i have 2 by 4 not painted sittin outside last two years i see alot of wasp including bald face hornet using as a nestin material i was hunting them beacause they attack beehive in october
