I read somewhere that if you want to help wasps and bees drink, fill a plate with glass marbles and water. The marbles 'pull up' the water between them and the insects can drink safely without risking to drown. Also, take care to keep wasp traps at the right distance from the living and dining area. Too far away and they won't find this alternative, too close and they will invade your private space.
Wasps have a useful role as pest controllers. Going around destroying their nests is not regarded as good environmental practice and should only be done if they become a problem inside residential buildings.
There was an old man of St. Bees,
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp.
When asked, "Does it hurt?"
He relied, "No, it doesn't.
I'm so glad that it wasn't a hornet."
-- W.S. Gilbert
Yeah, I know! Just thought it might amuse. :-)
My husband is deathly allergic to wasp stings so I am hyper conscious of the issues with wasps. I use the hanging honey traps everywhere. yellow is the attractive colour for wasps, and I pour pamplamousse wine in there to attract them. They can’t get enough of the stuff. Try hanging the pots 10-15 feet either side of your pool in trees or on Shepard hooks from the garden store and you should see a difference soon.
Buzz Off! Not literally. You can buy it from most pool stores. It worked for us and kept guests buzz free. see here http://www.impactwater.com/fiche-impact-english.php?id=26
Ok, I see. Thanks John.
Hi Caroline, PPM, parts per million, the level of the salt and also used for most chemical additions in swimming pools, could also be in Mg/litre milligrams per litre which to intents and purposes is the same thing.
Yes you water softner salt is/should be pure enough from a good supplier.
Michael, very few here too. None around my hives at all, just the very occasional ones on our fig trees. My bees were fighting back last year but the indigenous ones seem as healthy and present as ever and wasps are more numerous so perhaps they are not managing to establish as it was feared they would?
Talking about wasps has anyone else noticed a decline in asian hornet numbers this year, on our farm we have only noticed the odd one whereas this time last year you could not get near the fruit trees because of them.
For the last 4 years we have been setting the beer traps to catch the queens in june, do you think we could be winning against them or is just the wet summer that we have had.
Quite, Brian!
But what about the wasps in our blue, un aerated piscine? Must we have the toads there too? They do quite often get in by mistake and we fish them out, but they seem to be too busy swimming to catch anything. Maybe a small toad pond nearby might attract them more than the deep blue yonder…
Salamander tadpoles are supposedly as good, plus all of the amphibians eat mosquito eggs and larvae. There are lots of pits in the forest around here where I have watched various amphibians feeding and it may well be a solution but it also depends on what people want around them.
My next farm neighbour swears by toad ponds to get rid of large amounts of wasps, he digs a one metre square hole in his garden lines it with thick plastic material fills it with water, plants a few oxygenated plants to stop it smelling. the toads find this water every year so he is never short of them, they take up residence and just wait for the wasps to arrive.
He called me over at the end of june to watch the toads at work, the wasps land on the water and within a few seconds they are history, he tells me a good sized toad can eat between 20-30 wasps a day,and it does not cost a penny after the first year not daft these old french farmers are they,
yes, birdbaths would seem like a very sensible suggestion. We have had the wasp man here this year for the first time since we built the house and pool in 2001/02. He sprayed the house roof, the cabanon roof and the pool house roof.... we looked as though we had been inserted into the gingerbread man story, and it didn't seem to do a huge amount, other than do in the ants. We called him back (it wasn't cheap) and we all stood and looked at the pool with its many wasps. After much oh la la-ing he said that if we could find any nest he would come and remove it,but that probably they were coming from the woodland above our garden. I hate sprays too, and this was a last resort, but didn't achieve much except depleting our bank balance.
Off to put out fresh water for wasps at once.
Friends were here just now. They have had the same thing for four years since installing the pool. What they do is look for concentrations of wasps within about 200m, thus finds the nests and get rid of them. The vast majority are very small, so easily dealt with using a single squirt of wasp extermination spray. They find that the more they get rid of the easier the matter. They are well inside an area of woodland and orchards so I imagine it must be quite time consuming, however the man is a 'freelance' sports teacher and referee who is both very agile and has lots of time between jobs anyway.He is a 'green' who doesn't actually like doing it but thinks they have no choice. He was saying that wasps normally do not land on water in any sense, they usually skim the surface to take the water they need to drink and build their nests with their proboscis. They cannot swim but when they do land stay afloat by using the surface tension of the water which eventually breaks. They normally sink after a while and are dealt with by the filter. An accumulation of dead wasps in the case of a swarm partially landing and drowning can get into the filtration and make a gooey mess. Apparently that happens only very occasionally.
They have put up birdbaths on poles with feeders for the birds who then very often eat the wasps who drown. Leaving small containers of water such as flowerpot dishes helps a lot too. They say it has not 100% resolved it but generally reduced it a great deal.
We don’t have anything in the pool other than the thermometer for them to land on. (Or us) The freshwater idea sounds sensible.
Wasps need to drink a lot of water,i think it as a lot do do with the nests they build mixing water with the soil.
We also had this problem till we removed anything that they could land on to take the pool water also a good idea is to have a plastic container filled with fresh water with items floating in it so that they can land to take water not to far away from the pool and in time they will move to this water source.
Thanks John - can you explain exactly what ‘ppm’ means as a measure for salt? And would the salt we use for the doucisseur be ok?
The wasp nest trick sounds worth a try.
Hi Caroline, careful what you add to the water, it may get rid of wasps but can mess up the filtration etc. I know a few people who have added some salt to the water and report some success. I took a while before they learned it was salty. You wouldn't need much 1000-1500 ppm of salt should do it the little wasps have sensitive taste buds it appears.
Alternatively the Waspinator
or a pillow case made to look like a wasps nest, not tried this personally but wasps are apparently territorial so won't go near another wasps nest so the pillow case tinted to be the same colour as a wasps nest and hung near the pool may work.
Most pools are chlorinated, if they use salt it's passed through a chlorinator where chlorine is produce from the brine solution, Chlorine pools are automatically or manually dosed with chlorine, when that breaks down as part of the disinfection process salt is left behind in the pool so all pools are also salt pools but maybe not strong enough to dissuade your wasps.
Great, thanks.