The last two days have been mighty fine weather and that motivated me to remove the tarps covering the summer deck furniture and accessories. The earliest of the yellowjackets that will eventually swarm over the fruit that drops from our several fruit trees are already out and flying fast and hard around the yard. My wife tells me that this is the time that the queens of the yellowjacket tribe are out and about and that if we can trap the queens then the population of yellowjackets will be greatly reduced. We purchased the hanging traps that have a compound in them that is supposed to be irresistable to the yellowjackets and today we got the metal hanging posts to place some of the traps in a perimeter around the deck so the population that actually reaches us and our guests will be reduced. Our arborist tolds us that when the full yellowjacket season is on (which will be later in the summer) he has seen 2 or 3 of the yellowjackets wait just outside the entrance to a honey bee hive and when one of the pollen collectors arrives to enter the hive two of the yellowjackets hold it and the third one tears its head off. We don't have honey bee hives and I have witnessed the ferocity of the yellowjackets just in competing for a piece of fruit that they want. Pretty vicious characters and we hope to keep the population under better control this year.
Movie Recommendations:
"I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" (2004) - No, don't see it. OC-
"Alfie" (2004) - No, don't see it. OC-
Lee's OC Index:
OC+ = High potential healing and/or educational message for people with OCD tendencies.
OC- = Low potential healing and/or educational message for people with OCD tendencies.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I trust that by now you've been able to catch some of the yellowjacket queens with the traps you purchased! I work for the company that makes those traps. Your wife is correct: for every queen you catch in the spring, that's one less yellowjacket nest that would be active later in the summer. (If you're interested, you can check out our RESCUE! BugBlog... there's a link from our home page.)
Post a Comment