On 1 May, 08:25, The Other Mike
wrote:
On Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:29:02 +0100, "spamlet"

wrote:
Ignore them and let them get on with the valuable job of keeping your garden
much freer of pests than it otherwise would be. *

Possibly, but wasp numbers are getting completely out of hand in late
summer in some areas.

Our fruit trees are all in
flower, but there is not a bee in sight! *Or butterfly.

Well when you have seen a mob of wasps completely destroy a honey bee
colony in less than a week in late summer you might understand why
there is a lack of bees for pollination the following spring.

Seeing a returning forager honey bee land on a hive and then a
fraction of a second later have its arse end ripped off by a waiting
wasp that then flies off with the meaty bits leaving the honey bee
walking around on all its legs but slowly dying oozing its guts out is
pretty shocking.

Then, when the wasps have taken out all the guard bees and the
foragers, you get the wasps eating all the bee larvae out of the hive,
the remaining bees give up or get eaten and the wasps strip the entire
hive down to bare wax, no honey, no bees but millions of f*cking
wasps.

Any queen wasp I see I have no hesitation in squashing. *I certainly
don't rescue the little *******s. *There are plenty of other predators
to keep aphids and the like under control.

--

I've never seen that level of destruction but I've just seen a queen
wasp kill out a pretty weak hive this past week - by coincidence I
caught here as she left the hive and disposed of her. So I'm sorry,
Spamlet, wasps and bees do not get on and the bees typically come off
worse, so I join the Other Mike in pursuing them with vigour, and
making sure that on my property anyway all wasp nests get destroyed.

By the way, in my experience the bigger hazard of spraying the nest
entrance is making sure that I don't get a face full of the powder.
Wasps don't seem to have the same coordinate nest defence capability
as bees - disturb a large nest you will get attacked, but just
spraying dust around the entrance hole isn't disturbing the nest.

Rob