If you only wanted to stop the robbing then an easier solution that moving
would be to block the hive entrance. Do this at night when it's properly dark.
I've seen wasps trying to rob at dawn recently (ie 5am).
The other advice from Jack and Paul still stands -- narrow the entrances to
your active hive; move the robbed hive if you want it cleaned out; look hard if
you want to find the wasp nests.
Will
On 06/08/18 12:38, Jack Pritchard wrote:
Hi Alla,
Are the wasps nesting inside the hive, or just foraging the honey? If they're
nesting inside it might be possible to move or exterminate them. If they're
only foraging, you'd need to find the nest to exterminate them - just killing
the foragers won't make much difference.
Probably best to keep the wasps away from the live hive if you can. Once
they've cleaned out the dead hive they are likely to try the live one.
If you do move or destroy the old comb, it's worth narrowing the entrances of
any active hives for a few days - the wasps will be looking for a food source,
and a smaller entrance will be much easier for bees to defend.
And depending on why the hive died, you might be able to store the frames to
feed a weaker hive through the winter?
Jack
On Mon, 6 Aug 2018, 12:20 Alla Cordery,
<alla.cordery@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:alla.cordery@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hello everyone,
One of my colonies died earlier this summer. I am not sure quite why, but my
guess is that they swarmed and did not leave a queen.
So we left the hive alone even though it had supers full of honey, but this
honey looked very hard and unusable. What we have noticed now is that lots of
wasps go in and out of the hive. Our second hive is only 2 meters away and is
still doing well, but we are very uneasy about the proximity of wasps.
How do we resolve the problem?
My initial thought was to remove the wasp infested hive ASAP, so it is not next
to our active beehive. Then I thought that we should try to exterminate the
wasps, but I don't know how.
Any advice?
With kind regards,
Alla
