Wasps and Hornets Are Impeding Progress in the Garden

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You know the saying, “The dog ate my homework.”? Well, I’m blaming it on the wasps. They’re as bad as I’ve ever seen them, and they’re seriously cramping our outdoor style. I’m even blaming not weeding one of the front gardens on them. When I was cleaning it up – or at least trying to – six to eight wasps came barreling out from underneath the deck. I was gone and the weeds remain. I’ll weed it after it freezes.

Pesky Wasps

My husband, too, is a having a terrible time with them swarming the beehives. They are voracious when it comes to anything sweet. He’s been spinning honey these past couple of weekends, and after all of the honey is spun out of the combs, he puts them back in the boxes and sets them near the hives for the bees to clean out and use. The other day, the wasps found them, and he Shop-Vac’ed thousands of determined wasps and hornets. He spent an hour using the vacuum to catch them as they came in to eat the honey. (And, as a sidenote in case anyone is wondering, the bees don’t die when they are sucked up. He checked. They were very much alive inside the Vac.) 

Our ‘Polana’ fall-bearing raspberries are ripening now, which brings another challenge of picking them in between the wasps and hornets. Grant will do it whenever, but if the boys are going to pick, they want to do it in the early morning before the wasps are active. I’m with them. The last thing anyone wants to do is grab a raspberry that a wasp already claimed. 

Not Just the Garden

They’ve also been a general nuisance just around the house. With all of the spinning going on lately, they are everywhere. It’s so bad that we can’t really go outside without having to watch what we’re doing because they’re always there. And it’s a mad dash to jump in the car and close the door since I firmly believe my eldest would open the door and jump out even if the car was heading down the road if we had a wasp inside. 

Their presence is also making normal tasks more challenging. One of the boys’ tasks to do daily is water the trees, but there was a rather large nest of yellow jackets in the ground at the base of one of the chokecherries. They flooded it, which didn’t kill them, but made the boys feel better about being chased away.

The oddest situation concerning wasps and hornets happened at a friends’ place this year. They told me that the wasps were all over the aspen trees near their outdoor seating area. There were hundreds of them. It was unnerving to try to relax with so many stinging insects buzzing around the area. After researching what might be happening, it appears the wasps and hornets like the honeydew secreted from the aphids, which are common on the aspens. They don’t tend to them like ants do, but they certainly are attracted to the sweet substance. There’s not much you can really do except to wash off the aphids, although at this point in the season, it’s a near futile effort. 

As bothersome as the wasps and hornets have been in these last few weeks, I’m not going to complain too loudly. The weather is quickly changing. It won’t be long until the cold nights silence the crickets we hear at night, along with the wasps that bother us during the day. I think I would rather deal with the wasps a bit longer. 

Meet Amy Grisak

Amy is a freelance author and photographer in Great Falls, MT who specializes in gardening, foods, and sustainable agriculture. She provides information on every kind…

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