Wasp Information and How to Control Them
Wasps
The wasp is a common problem throughout summer in the UK and other parts of Northern Europe. They are social insects that form colonies inside nests. Nests are often found in soil banks, roof spaces, and in areas within trees and walls.
Biology
The queen wasp will emerge from its hibernation around mid-April time and will search for a suitable site for her colony. The queen wasp will then build the foundations of the nest by using chewed bark and dried timber mixed with saliva. The nest at this point is no bigger than a golf ball in size and within this nest she lays between 10 and 20 eggs. The first brood of adult workers takes over the tasks of enlarging the nest and providing food for subsequent eggs laid down by the queen. By the end of the summer, the nest can contain between 3000 and 5000 wasps and measure over 30 cm across.
Later in the summer, males and young queens emerge and mating occurs. Once fertilised, the queen flies away to find a suitable site for the winter. Once the cooler weather comes, the workers and remaining males become lethargic, and they feed off ripe and over-ripe fruits. This can produce aggressive behaviour to anyone interfering with them.
The onset of the cold weather kills off all of these workers and males, and it is only the queen that survives in hibernation to start a new colony in the spring.
Importance
Wasps do visit bins, waste depots and dead animal bodies and therefore they have the possibility of spreading diseases, but they are mainly known for their nuisance in the late summer.
In the early parts of summer, wasps are too busy collecting food for the nest, however later in the season as the larval rearing decreases, the workers and males turn to sweeter products and they become nuisances in homes, bakeries, offices etc. They also have the ability to sting apparent threats, a habit which increases as the insect becomes more irritable with the onset of the cooler weather, and the feeding on fermented, over-ripe fruits.
Control
Some people are allergic to wasp stings, but nonetheless, it still becomes an irritant if you’re not. Wasps are generally easy to control if access to the nest can be achieved. Control of adults in flight alone will unlikely to exert much control over an active nest, however strategic positioned wasp traps, such as Waspbane, will attract nuisance wasps away from sensitive areas for example children play-areas or public parks and gardens.
The main aim should be to disable the nest by applying a residual insecticide to the nest entrance. If the nest in found in a loft space, shed or anywhere indoors, the use of mini-smoke generators is beneficial to knock down the majority of the worker wasps. Wasps re-entering the nests will need to come into contact with the residual dust, and they will naturally walk to product into the nest, thus killing it off.
Nests are often found in loft spaces, cavity walls, behind cladding, in flower beds etc. Be careful when treating wasps in loft space etc. and make sure there are no signs of bat activity.
In general residual dusts are far better then residual sprays. Most residual dusts are ideal, for example, bendiocarb and pyrethriod.
If you are suffering from a wasp infestation why not try wasp traps available from PPC Supplies.
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Honey Bee Swarming – How It Means Loss Of Honey
Come spring and you will notice honey bees swarming. Swarming is the process when bees, in the thousands, will fly with the queen bee in the attempt to mate with her and also find a new place they can build their home.
The bee hive is a very organized place. Each group of bees have their work cut out for them. There are the worker bees that need to build the bee hive, there are the bees that scout for new locations for hives and sources of nectar and there are the bees that server the queen bee that is only concerned with laying eggs in the cells of the hive.
The hive is divided into cells that are demarked for honey and larvae. The queen bee goes about the hive depositing eggs in the cells and the worker bees cover the cell with wax to protect the larvae. It is surprising how the sex of the larvae is determined by the way the worker bee nurtures the young.
Some of the larvae will grow to be worker bees and some will grow to be females, which are searched out and killed by the queen bee. There can only be one queen bee in the hive. The worker bees will strive to save the female bees as they have to reproduce, these worker bees will do all they can to prevent the queen from killing all the female bees.
One of two things will happen in the spring every year. Either the workers will drive out the queen bee along with thousands of her workers, or the queen and her workers will drive out thousands of workers who will leave with one queen bee. This flying away in thousands is known as swarming and so a group of bees is called a swarm. They are actually trying to mate with the virgin queen and then look for a place to build their hive.
When bees swarm, the queen bee flies very high and a group of bees called drones try to catch up with her, while the workers fly in pursuit. The first drone to catch up with the queen bee mates with her and then dies. Once the mating is done the queen will retreat to a safe place and will be surrounded by thousands of her workers who protect her.
When you see something that looks like a hive on a tree it is actually hundreds of thousands of worker bees surrounding the queen bee protecting her from possible attack, while the scouts have gone out in search of a suitable place to build their hive. At this time they have no honey to sustain them and are very hungry.
Some bee keepers are very good at attracting swarms of bees to their man made hives where they cultivate their honey making skills to the maximum.
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