Adrian M. Wenner wrote:

>    When people say "yellow jackets," they usually refer to this
> species, one that causes such problems at picnic tables and in bee
> yards.   Unfortunately, some citizens erroneously call them "meat
> bees."

Adrian, thanks for clearing up the wasp/yellow jacket confusion (on my
part).

I, also, use a small entrance all year and have no problems with yellow
jackets except once, when a colony was near death.

My semi-informed guess is that a weak colony usually is the reason
yellow jackets attacking a colony. It is just too weak to defend itself
because of other problems. Hence it is a clear identifier of colony
problems.

If I want to get rid of yellow jackets, I go to the ground nest and pour
a bucket of soapy water into it then stamp down the entrance.

When I had the problem with them attacking the hive, I got a spray
bottle and filled it with soapy water, sat by the hive and shot them out
of the sky. More fun than a video game.

I get back to my first post on this and wonder if trapping them is
adding to the problem. Bugs are not exactly the brightest bulbs in the
Universe, so presenting a food source every year will certainly make
them think they are on to a good thing.

Which has been my experience with most pests. We had few problems with
Japanese Beetles until recently. I planted soy beans and too late
learned they love soy beans. Now we have a Japanese Beetle problem. The
solution is to kill them at the source (Milky spore disease) but traps
abound in stores because they are cheaper. But the traps attract more
beetles than you already have and they will look at other sources of
food in the area. The traps compound the problem unless you increase
their numbers to capture most all the pests. Then you are at the
economic point where you see that you should have spent more in the
beginning on the correct approach to remove the problem.

I hand pick them when they are in numbers, but crush the early ones on
the leaves which seems to slow them down. That technique is used by some
organic gardeners who take it one step further and put the picked
beetles in a blender, filter the mess and apply it to the plants. The
supposition is that you are feeding the beetles all the diseases that
may have resided in their predecessors. Also called the Jeffrey Dahmer
branch of organic gardening.

Bon appetite!

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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