An attack of wasps on an apiary is fraught with a loss of food for the winter for an entire bee family, so every beekeeper needs to take care of the safety of insects. Read about methods of dealing with wasps and the rules for placing an apiary on a site in order to prevent insect attacks.
How dangerous wasps for bee hives in the fall
As the autumn-winter season approaches, wasps need more food to support the family, so they prey on insects, including bees, using them as food for their larvae. Mature individuals feed on honey products, therefore they steal nectar collected by them and made honey. Wasp, which steals nectar from the hive, is often a peddler of infectious diseases. The insect can also attack bees and destroy up to 5 individuals per day.
Methods for protecting bees from wasp attacks
A bee is a fragile insect that alone cannot cope with a huge wasp compared to it, so the beekeeper must protect the hives from its invasion. You can deal with a pest in an apiary by various methods, which are described below.
Important! Due to the attack of wasps on hives, honey reserves are critically reduced, which leads to the death of most insects.
How to find and neutralize a hornet’s nest
Pests live in colonies with one uterine queen. Settled in multi-tiered nests with a protective shell. You can find the nesting site of wasps when examining the territory of the apiary.
First of all, you need to inspect such sites:
- voids and holes in the soil;
- rarely used buildings;
- cracks in the walls of buildings and under the roof;
- old stumps;
- hollow trees.
In no case should you try to knock down a nest with a stick or rip it with your bare hands, because angry insects can painfully bite a person. If pests settled in an inaccessible place, then the exit from their monastery is simply blown out with foam.
Hornet’s nest in the wrong place. The nest located in the reach zone can be neutralized in a more humane way - wrap it in dense polyethylene and carry it to a long distance from the hives. It is better to destroy wasp nests in the dark, when the air temperature drops significantly and insects are at rest.
Chemical and poisonous control agents
The method of using pesticides should be used as a last resort, because these funds are harmful not only to insects, but also to humans and animals. The most harmless way is to use kerosene, which is poured into the holes of the nest. But this technique does not always work and can only partially destroy the colony.
Did you know? During the day, the average colony of bees is able to collect up to 10 kg of nectar.
You can save the apiary from the invasion of wasps with drugs:
- Mosquitol
- "Dichlorvos";
- "Delta Zone".
Point destruction
Due to the fact that some wasp nests are out of reach of humans or at a great distance from the apiary, getting rid of the pest is not easy. Pests can even accidentally fly into the apiary. In this case, single insects are caught and destroyed so that other individuals do not know the location of the hives.
DIY traps
An effective way to get rid of insects in an apiary is to set traps that are easy to make at home. You will need a cropped bottle made of plastic or any other container into which sweet syrup or kvass is poured. A drink in an amount of 100 ml should be diluted with 10 ml of boric acid.
Did you know? To produce 1 kg of honey, a working bee needs to fly around 8 million flowers.
Special ladders are built in the bait so that the insect can leave the trap and bring poisoned food to the nest. Thus, mature individuals will die from contact with the substance, and the larvae and uterus will be poisoned by contact. Due to the action of this technique, insects will die within 10 days.
Video: wasp and hornet traps
Folk methods
To prevent wasps from settling in your apiary, you need to plant plants near the hives, the smell of which will scare away the pests. Plants such as mint, lemon balm, geranium, bitter wormwood will force the wasps to look for another refuge. Red pepper, which is hung near the habitat of insects, also helps in the fight against insects. A pungent smell scares away the wasps and makes them leave their homes.
Preventive spring measures for the appearance of wasps in the fall
In order to prevent the pest invasion, it is necessary to take preventive measures in the spring that will help to avoid large losses of bees in the fall. To do this, it is important to track the movement of wasps in a timely manner and choose the right site for installing an apiary.
The right choice of terrain for the apiary
A beehive is best installed in areas with dense soil. The apiary should be located on a site with dense grass cover. Pests love to settle on the place of the embankment and vacant lots on ravines, especially they are impressed by clay or sandy soil, where burrows are easy to build.
Timely tracking of the appearance and movement of wasps
You can get rid of insects by tracking them. In the spring, when the pest begins its movement in the area reserved for the apiary, you need to follow it, so you can find a hornet’s nest even in dense thickets or on the top of the tree and take measures to destroy it.
Important! If there are sandy areas around the apiary, then they need to be dug to a depth of 40 cm, which will help get rid of wasp nests.
Autumn is the most suitable time for activating the pest, due to the fact that the wasp makes reserves for the winter. That is why the fight against insects should be complex, because the collection of honey and the life of a bee swarm may depend on the correct preventive measures as well as the timely care of the apiary.
