The books / Pests, Predators and Robbing / chapter 11 of 14
The trap that works is the spring one
All chapters
- The dangerous weeks
- What a dearth looks like from the hive
- How robbing starts
- The beekeeper rings the bell
- Recognising it
- The entrance reducer
- The robbing screen
- When it is already bad
- Wasps through the year
- Strong colonies repel, weak ones fall
- The trap that works is the spring one
- Mice in October
- Bears
- Leaving them alone
Wasp traps baited with heptyl butyrate catch wasps at either end of the year, but only one of those catches actually matters. In spring, a trap catches overwintered queens, each one alone and searching for a place to found an entirely new colony.
Set the same trap in autumn and you catch workers instead, individuals from nests that are already large, already past their peak, and only weeks from dying off naturally anyway. Autumn trapping feels productive, a full trap looks like progress, but it barely dents the pressure on your hives.
If you only have the time or the traps for one season, spring is the one that changes anything.