The books / Pests, Predators and Robbing / chapter 9 of 14
Wasps through the year
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 pressure is not a single event, it builds and fades across half the year. Numbers are low through early summer while wasp colonies are still small, then climb steadily from July onward as their own nests grow toward thousands of workers needing protein and sugar.
Pressure on your hives escalates through August and peaks around September, when wasp colonies are at their largest and their own forage is starting to run short, pushing them toward yours instead. From there it declines through October and November as wasp colonies collapse for the winter, their workers dying off with nothing left to feed.
A beekeeper who only starts worrying about wasps in September has usually already missed the window where defence was cheap and easy.