European Wasps?

[shazlikd]

European Wasps?

Please do not ask me to:

- Contact my local Council

- Contact a European Wasp Hotline

- Build a European Wasp Trap

I want to be clear on these matters.

I am trying to find out if there is any type of insecticide powder / liquid that can be lightly coated (or thoroughly mixed) on mince meat, so European Wasps will be willing to eat the meat.....and most importantly.....take it back to their nests? The trick is not to repel them from the meat. I know that European Wasps love eating mince meat, but is there anything even MORE attractive to them? Something that would send them crazy with hunger.

- Mince meat + sugar?

- Mince meat + jam?

- Mince meat + honey?

- Tinned pet food?

- A specific type of tinned pet food that is most attractive?

- Tinned pet food with any of the above mixtures?

What would happen if you put some mince meat in a plastic zip-loc bag, and sprayed copious amounts of fly spray inside, then thoroughly mixed it in?

Any advice at all?

Regards

Shazlikd

[George.com]

[George.com]

> rob

6

[Lar]

Probably any of the inorganic dusts that are commonly used in pest control may work... boric acid, diatamaceous earth, silica gel. The guess work would be how much (little) would be the amount to mix with the bait matrix to have any effect without making the bait unattractive to them.

Would think the chemicals in the aerosol would make the bait unattractive to them.

Early Spring the wasps will be feeding on strictly sweet liquids, yellow jacket traps baited with juice concentrates (I always have had good luck with apple concentrate for yellow jackets) probably will attract them. Later in the year, when they are hunting insects you may switch the bait to tuna fish, or whatever you feel they will feed on.

Lar

[Uli Lachmuth]

Boric acid OK, but DE or silica gel? These work from outside interfering with the cuticle wax layer (some claim they'd block spiracles, but that's guesswork and not yet proven). I do not know any mention that they'd have any potential as stomach poisons.

A mixture of vinegar (a lot) and strawberry jam (some) once attracted some 600 wasps per day (for almost three weeks) into a funnel trap I had put up on my balcony ... a drop or two of detergent helped them drown.

OK, that's not the bait idea you're pursuing - but that, after all, may not exactly be what you want anyway: Where's the benefit to bait countless wasps without knowing where their nest(s) are? You might be killing off dozens of nests all over the place without seeing one wasp less where they disturb you. OTOH, when you can access the nest you can save yourself the baiting troubles and go about the job the easy way.

There's only one purpose baits could serve when dealing with wasps, and that's attracting them away from areas (like placing a "ring" of baits around a food premises in order to have wasps visit your traps rather than the inside).

Cheers, Uli

[John Savage]

Another source of insecticides for your experimentation would be those in the gardening section of stores. A bit of malathion (sp?) can be added to homemade fruit fly lures to kill the flies, so I'd guess it would do the same for wasps.

[C.D. Koger]

[Octa Ex]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:52:17 +0100, Uli Lachmuth etched in cyberspace:

Borax would do - its easy to get, quantities of about 1 to 2% are used in ant rid. Ants and bees are descended from wasps so the same kind of chemical will kill them. Tartar emetic is used too, but is harder to get - try a homiopathic chemist. Lead acetate may do the job too, but could leave toxic remainders in the environment. I would not expect that silica gel would be harmful to eat.

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