The Wasp Lady Returns

The lovely Laura, our local wasp exterminator from Wiltshire Council has had to make a return visit as I discovered after her last visit that we were still inundated with small stripy visitors, this time coming from the opposite side of the roof, and so a different nest. I had a look up in the roof space and found this

and  this is just the bit you can see, the exit point is some feet away so there's likely to be quite a bit more of it on the other side of the masonry. The third wasp nest this year.  Actually I took this photo after her visit, just to be on the safe side, that's why you can't see any wasps flying about. The nests really are the most amazing looking things, made of chewed up wood collected by the wasps from the surrounding area. (I was wondering why my garden furniture was looking a bit "distressed", at this rate it will soon be a danger for all but very thin people to sit on.)

All gardening by it's very nature entails management of wildlife to a greater or lesser extent, I don't like to kill anything for no reason, but it's true to say that I think nothing of crushing a few slugs under my wellie, and removing hundreds of aphids with the water hose or just wiping them off with my finger, whilst at the same time I encourage worms with a wormery, feed wild birds, and provide harbourages for ladybirds. No life form is intrinsically bad, it's just that some are more useful to the gardener than others. If I thought there was any danger to the population of grey squirrels, rats, wasps, foxes, wood pigeons, and rabbits, I would certainly feel obliged to provide environments to encourage their numbers, but we are in danger of being overrun with grey squirrels in England, and I can no longer allow my chickens and ducks to range freely in my garden because of marauding foxes. My eyes are trained to spot the first sign of a rat run near the duck house in winter, and I immediately put poison down to kill them, retrieving and burning any cadavers that I find(so that they pose less of a danger to animals further along the food chain such as owls). 

Mice are a problem too, but because they are mostly harmless wood mice and voles that like to eat my early pea and bean seedlings, I generally find that I can take measures to outwit them by sowing indoors in covered pots and containers, and not resorting to anything more drastic unless they take it into their heads to come indoors during the winter, which they sometimes do. Anyway, I suppose what I'm saying is it's a matter of moderation and tolerance wherever possible, realising that ones garden is a living part of the landscape and not something superimposed upon it, -  no one wants to live in a sterile desert, at least I don't, but sometimes I have to admit it's just a matter or me or them!

Wasps and The Waspinator

I had a visit from the Wiltshire Council Pest Control Department this morning. Which is not as alarming as it sounds, it was the Wasp Lady as I call her, a lovely lady who gets rid of wasps nests in difficult positions.  I don't mean she does it standing on one leg, it's the nest that's in the difficult position, in the roof space once again, same as last year. The Wasp Lady is kitted up in bee suit, or wasp suit I suppose, and a spray on the end of a long lance which enables her to reach up to the roof level. It costs £50, but is a necessary expense for me to protect my beehives from wasp invasion.

As I've mentioned before, wasps are a bit of a menace if you're a beekeeper, as they usually turn to robbing the beehives at some stage during the summer. I always wait to see if this will happen before ringing the council, as I would otherwise leave the wasps well alone, but I have found that my strong hive has a battalion of guard bees at the hive entrance fending off the wasps quite successfully, but my other hive, the weaker one is looking  pretty much overwhelmed by the invasion. Wasps steal not only honey from beehives, but being carnivores they also eat the larvae, and even the bees,  and over time can destroy a weak colony of bees. In fact we have two wasp nests in the garden, but the other one is in the ground and I can deal with this one myself. It's an easy matter to don my bee suit, and spray the nest with a proprietory wasp nest destroyer, best time to do it is at dusk when fewer insects are flying.

At least this is what I've had to do until I discovered the Waspinator recommended on Sarah Raven's website, and anything that's good enough for the sainted Sarah is good enough for me. They are imitation wasp nests which are apparently very effective at convincing wasps that the area is already occupied by another colony and so they give it a wide berth. Frankly it sounds pretty improbable but they are sold out on Sarah Raven** though still available from the manufacturers direct, so I've just sent off for a couple of Waspinators, and I will see whether they work and report back in due course. It would be lovely to have something that just kept wasps away, and didn't involve toxic chemicals and/or wholesale death and destruction. Generally speaking I'm in favour of life, rather than death, even for wasps.

**See comment below