YJ's what the deal

[Mikey N.C.]

What's going on this year with YELLOW JACKETS
Have talked with 4 different beeks all are losing hives no including beeks on this forum.
I'm using the bottle traps , but doesn't seem to matter.
Question to all how bad are they in your area and what type of traps an or bait is successful

[neillsayers]

This was my third season with bees. In the past two I just reduced the entrance to about 2 bees wide and that stopped it. I got hit so hard this year, the yellow jackets wiped out all my hives. Have to start from scratch next year. I trapped enough of them to equal 2 or three colonies. It must be weather related but not being anything close to an expert I have no idea why they were so bad. I'm hearing reports from all over about this so it's not just a regional thing.

[Mikey N.C.]

Neill,
What type traps and bait are you using ?
I've used banana peels , fruit cocktail,  hot dogs with baking soda and on an on.
Everybody's had different rain fall and drought conditions.
From what I've been reading it's a problem everywhere this year.  Thats why i started this post , to hopefully get some responses from all.
Thanks again Neill

[Lburou]

I found an interesting article revealing some of what is going on with the wasps. I would expect weather and food availability to have a major impact on wasp populations.  In a year that yields a robust wasp population, their need for carbohydrates in the fall is explained in this excerpt from an article in Good Fruit Grower Magazine:

...Sweet tooth phase

The life cycle of hornets and yellow jackets is intriguing. Of the 5,000 or so that may live in a wasp nest by late fall, only a few specially cared-for females will survive to be fertilized and overwinter to become queens, creating new colonies the following season. All the others die, including the males that fertilize the new queens. (In warmer climates, nests may survive for more than one year.)

The new queens build a small paper nest and lay 50 or so eggs the next spring, from which workers will develop to care for more brood and build more nest. The queen quits working and becomes an egg-laying machine.

Developing larvae need protein to grow, so early in the season the worker wasps are predators bringing in meat to feed the brood.

“The adults of all species are voracious predators on all types of insects, including leafrollers, adult flies, and moths, in the summer months until they switch to their sweet tooth phase in the fall,” Biddinger said.

The sweet tooth is there all the time, but is satisfied in a different way early in the season. When tending brood, the adult wasps feed insects to the young.  And the developing larvae secrete a sugary substance, in a process called -trophallaxis, that provides energy to the workers who feed them.

When the brood becomes very large, this sugar source becomes inadequate and the adults become fruit eaters to get the sugar they need. That’s when -contact with humans escalates to problem levels...

P.S.  Mikey, I added the recommendation for using meat in the wasp baits.

Control

The use of traps baited with fish or other meat early in the season may also be effective. These also have not been evaluated for use on a commercial scale.

[Lburou]

Neil, I'm sure sorry to hear of your lost hives.   

I'm wondering if a change in your entrance restriction could stave off the wasps...?  Maybe even a robbing screen?  What were your entrance configurations?

A beekeeper close to me had dead wasps in the hundreds outside one weaker hive in particular.  Stronger hives closeby were not attacked.  He had small entrances.  His weaker hive outlasted the wasp attack.  I haven't noticed that many yellow jackets, although they were there whenever I opened a hive this fall.  Again, sorry for your loss.   

[Wandering Man]

People (not just beeks) in my area have complained about large numbers of yellow jackets.  I've seen a lot of those and the large red wasps, as well.  I've tried the commercial traps, using their magic juice, with only minor success.  I've also hung up a few sticky boards that are supposed to attract wasps.  They do better than the fluid filled traps, but they will also attract bees.

[Bakersdozen]

As Lee suggests, weather and available food plays a big effect on YJ populations.   At least that is what I think, but I am not an expert.     Populations of nature's critters tend to ebb and flow from year to year.  For example, rabbit populations will flourish one year because of adequate food.  The next year they will drop because the coyote population is feasting on hasenpfeffer.  The 3rd year, coyote populations will be up because of an adequate food supply and so forth.

[neillsayers]

Lee,
 When I first saw the robbing activity I reduced the entrance to about 3/8" by 3/4". There were hundreds of dead yellow jackets on the ground in front of the hive. I was tied up for a few days and when I checked back the YJs were mobbing all the entrances. So I stapled makeshift robber screens over the entrances. That seemed to stop them. All this time it was too cold to be open the hive and mucking about-mid 50s. When we had a warm day I went in and found many dead bees but no queen. I found a dead queen on the bottom board of one hive. At most no hive had more than a dozen bees.
 I suspect that when the pressure got really bad the living queens and bees just absconded. When I put out the robber screens I also placed soda bottle YJ traps with syrup for bait. I guesstimate I killed about 10,000 of the little suckers, but it was too late. Next year, I will put out traps mid-summer with rotton meat for bait. I've done this in years past and it works well. like your post indicates at the end of broodrearing season they go nuts for anything sweet, but in summer time meat will draw them in better than anything.
 Only glimmer of good news in this-when I realized my hives were dead, I left them out and they were soon covered with ferals robbing them out-there wasn't much. I lined out two directions they were coming and going from. Next year, I will line them out and maybe rob em back.
 I have made a friend in the beekeeper's class I've been taking and he has some good bees about 3 hours from here to help me get back in it again.

[apisbees]

yellow jackets and wasps also gang up on hives. they will join forces with other colonies and concentrate their effort on one colony. once it is decimated they will move onto the next. with so large of an attack force they can destroy mutable hives in one day.

[Lburou]

That is an interesting report Neil.  One (last resort) thing I've done when I can't control robbing is to move the hive.  I've moved the hive to three or four locations in my yard over a period of an hour or so.  I block the entrance with hardware cloth.  After the second or third relocation, the robbing bees can't find the hive.  In the meantime, I do what I can to keep them alive.  This strategy has worked a couple of times for me in ordinary robbing situations.  I have no idea how yellowjackets would fare after relocating a hive, your results will vary. 

[Bakersdozen]

For what it's worth, I just happened to read in Bee Culture mag a letter to the editor.  A woman from Washington State discovered that placing an extra hive lid propped up against and covering the entrance will foil yellow jackets. Her attempts to use an entrance reducer wasn't enough to stop the robbing.   She swears that YJs don't like shade and that the colony foragers will figure out the road block.  Her theory is the YJ is focused on the entrance and landing board.  Take that away and they are stumped.  She relies on this method during times when the colony is vulnerable to robbing and periods when YJs are scavenging for food sources.
I wonder if she has a SHB problem with all the shade at the entrance?

[neillsayers]

B12,
 I saw that post and she may be on to something. I've also heard spraying water on the robbers or hanging a wet tower or sheet over the hive entrance. Anyway, I will take this much more seriously in the years to come.