Apiary Thread (and Claire Byrne) 🐝

Things
521

The title is wrong.
They’re feasting on the honey, not the hornets.

522

I was searching for a trap for the hornett.
Seems overly complex and can’t understand how it wouldn’t trap bees and wasps as well.

523

They ate different stuff…you’ll catch a hape of moths though, unless you can shut it down at night. That trap is far too complicated - all you need is some class of bottle, cut an 1" x half way up. Fill it with strawberry jam almost to the x…fire in a bit of meat/fish plus apple cider vinegar (to deter bees). Push in the wings of the x. The wasps will always fly upwards to escape, then plunge to their deaths

1 Like
524

Sounds complicated.
Post up a picture or video.

525

Hornets don’t make honey so that one is feasting on grubs. Similarly, when they raid nests/hives of bees they are going for larvae and pupae primarily, any honey taken is incidental. That’s an Oriental HB in video, there’s a Eurasian version which migrates to Europe in summer and occasionally overshoots to Ireland but never breeds here.

3 Likes
526

True, but my sources in Asia assure me that they find the hives by sniffing out the sugar. The protein is the clincher

1 Like
527

Could you provide us with an outline drawing of this contraption please. We’d be better able to gauge its marketability prospects then but it sounds the bees knees….

528

Look. You get a 1.5/2 litre plastic bottle…with the cap on. About halfway up, you jam a pointed knife in…to make a 1"cut. Make another at a right angle…prise the ‘flaps’ in a wee bit. Fill bottle about 4/5 up with jammy water and fish, chicken, etc…plus a bit of apple cider vinegar.
Wasp flies in, sips, flies around, drowns.

The fancier version involves cutting the bottle in two, making a funnel of the top half and sticking it back on upside-down…works, is footery, and it’ll be full of rain in no time.
I haven’t patented it…so you can go ahead. Maybe donate 5% of profits to an initiative aimed at creating some adult literacy in tyrone

1 Like
529

I was enthusiastically following along up to this point.
What’s preventing the wasp from flying out again?

530

Innate gluttony

531

Flaps

2 Likes
532

They’re clumsy. The odd one will make it…but thats ok. Hell tell his mates about the fishy strawberry goodness

1 Like
533

A* student

1 Like
534

Featured on RTE news there a few moments ago. The traps displayed by Cork folk lacked your creativity but the overarching principle remained quite similar.

1 Like