Grow Your Own Magazine

Hello

As you managed to give me loads of ideas for getting rid of cats (not all of them were particularly ethical mind you), I was hoping you would help me out with WASPS!!!!.
I have a few fruit trees and they seem to attract an awful lot of wasps later in the summer. In particular they seem to hover over the lawn and I have 2 little helpers now (aged 5 and 3) so the wasps are not good news.

Thanking you

marketestalls



www.marketestalls.com - the Farmers Market Online
www.farmersmarketforum.co.uk

Half fill some jam jars with sugar water and string them up from the branches - instant wasp catchers. You can buy custom made ones, but the jam jars always worked for us when we were kids.

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Rat

British by birth
Scottish by the Grace of God

Blog updated Wednesday November 13th

If you carefully cut a cross in the lid then push the centre in you create a bit a funnel which stops any chance of them getting out again.

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Digger-07

"If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right" Henry Ford.

Yes, totally agree with the above. Basically you want to divert the wasps attention away from people, so if they're bothering, say, a picnic, give them a sacrificial bit of something sweet (fruit, lemonade) placed away from you. I have safely shared a picnic table with half a dozen wasps in this way

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When I was a kid we made our wasp traps with jam coating the inside rim of a jam jar half filled with water; we never had escapees either; they can't get a grip on the jam.

Totally agree, jam jar traps work really well. You can buy fancy expensive ones from garden centres, but why bother?

Take all the ripe fruit off the trees..will stop them.

Are you sure they are wasps and not those flys that look like wasps. We had loads of them two years ago

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think we have those aswell. These are definately wasps. You can actually see them flying in a line from far in the distance - I was going to follow the line back and look for the nest last year but I never got round to it. I'm not sure whether the council would come and remove a wasps nest if I complained.
Anyway - thanks everyone - jamjars it is!

marketestalls

www.marketestalls.com - the Farmer's Market Online
www.farmersmarketforum.co.uk

Marketestalls, if you find any wasp nests, get in touch with the local council's environmental health dept; it's their responsibility to get rid of them. Also, if you know any anglers, mention the nest to them and they may dig it out for you; the grubs inside make excellent bait.

But if it's bees you have to pay wasps are classed as vermin bees are not

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W. C. Fields