Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: Pest Control

  • Wasp control

    Wasp control

    I’d wanted to talk about how to read wasp body language this week, but that’ll be postponed. I couldn’t persuade any individuals to do threat displays this week – all live wasps were well-mannered, despite extreme invasion of their personal space.

    Most of the wasps I’ve seen around Trego are Polistes paper wasps. We have two main species here – the invasive European Paper Wasp (Polistes dominula) and the native Golden Paper Wasp (Polistes aurifer). In our area, Golden Paper Wasps peak in July, while the European Paper Wasps peak in August. While both are still around, I’ve been seeing far more European Paper Wasps lately.

    The European Paper Wasp is rather special, in that it doesn’t mind reusing old nests from last year and making them bigger. Because of this, they often reach a larger colony size faster than their native wasp competitors can. As such, these are likely to be most of the problem paper wasp nests you come across.

    The best bait for trapping wasps will vary by season. My neighbors have been having great success baiting their wasp traps with scallop and chicken… this means that the wasps that they are catching are from nests with many developing wasps!

    A meat-baited trap full of European Paper Wasps – this indicates that there are nearby nests full of wasp larvae.

    At this, another friend present asked me why folks these days trapped wasps with meat – he remembered his grandmother having lots of success baiting wasps with beer. The answer is that it depends on the season, and what part of their life cycle the wasps are in…

    Early on, a wasp nest is focused on growing: laying eggs and raising larvae to adulthood. Little humans need healthy food, protein to turn into muscle tissue. The same is true of young insects: adult wasps prefer to feed their larvae with protein-rich foods (any meat – caterpillars or dead deer, it makes no difference). If you’re seeing wasp nests with lots of brood cells by your home, consider putting a bit of meat, especially spoiling meat, in your wasp trap!

    A nest of the invasive European Paper Wasp – note the cells capped with silk, these contain developing wasps.

    Adult insects, however, aren’t going to build any more muscle than they already have. We mammals can continue to develop our musculature throughout adulthood. Insects only get bigger by molting, and almost all adult insects do not molt.

    Though they don’t grow, most adult insects do spend a lot of time flying. Flying is very energetically expensive (it’s why hummingbirds are such sugar junkies). Likewise, adult wasps prefer to eat high energy, sugary foods. If you’re trying to trap wasps later in the season, when they’re reproducing less, you’ll have better success baiting them in with sugar solutions, juice, or alcohol.

    Here’s good instructions for making a wasp trap – bait it however you’d like.
    As always, be aware of your local wildlife when setting up insect traps! If you’ve got a bear in the vicinity, it’s probably best to hold off on trapping for a while. They’re at least as fond of meat and booze as the wasps are…

    Next week: Wasp body language: how to tell if they’re aggressive.
    (for real this time – none were aggressive towards me this week, so no useful photos).

    Last Week: Wasps, not always hostile.

  • Control of earwigs

    Are earwigs our friends or foes?

    That depends on the context.

    Earwigs are primarily scavengers of rotting plant material. They aren’t likely to damage your garden plants themselves. As omnivores, they often help control aphids, mites, and various pest insect eggs… and I’m more than willing to put up with them if it means fewer aphids.

    However, if your garden plants become damaged by other things (e.g. rot on cabbage leaves along the edges of Pierid caterpillar feeding), earwigs may contribute and make the damage worse. It’s not uncommon to find earwigs when shucking corn, often in the tassels, sometimes feeding on the corn itself. It’s rare for them to damage harder-skinned fruits such as apples (the skin tends to be too hard for them to get past on their own), but they may become a nuisance if fruit damage from birds is present.

    If you want your earwigs gone, I’m willing to provide a bit of advice. Try removing their shelters near your home (big rocks alongside the house, piles of old boards, wet mulch, pretty much anything decaying, etc.).

    Outside, earwigs can be trapped by burying small tin cans (pet food cans or tuna cans are the perfect size) or disposable cups level with the ground, and filling them with cheap cooking oil (leave at least an inch of space from the top). Earwigs and similar insect scavengers will try to feed and will fall to their oily deaths. Depending on your local wildlife, this may be an unwise tactic.

    If they’re inside the house, set up a trap of moist newspaper rolled into tubes, containing a small amount of bait (rolled oats, wheat bran or wheat germ). The main idea is to create a dark daytime shelter that the earwigs will like. Check your trap every two or three days. When opening your earwig traps, either bag and trash the whole setup… Or shake the earwigs into an empty container to give them to chickens as feed (the flock my folks kept loved eating them).

    If you want to wage more aggressive warfare against earwigs, consider using diatomaceous earth. This comes from ancient freshwater sediments rich in the sharp glass-like remains of tiny algae called diatoms. It controls insects by damaging their outer waxy layer, causing them to die from dehydration. Diatomaceous earth should be spread in areas earwigs are likely to cross, entrance points to your home and places where they are abundant. If in the garden, ring the bases of plants you are concerned for with it.

    If you want to go the chemical warfare route, both permethrin and carbaryl (Sevin) have forms that are safe for use around food plants. I would recommend using a bait rather than a spray poison, as it will kill fewer of your beneficial garden insects like ground beetles and lady beetles. If earwigs are your target, you should be putting down poison in the evenings, as they are primarily nocturnal, and that way you’ll waste less of your bait on non-target insects.

    Consider commenting below to let us know how your earwig control efforts are going!
    What other insects would you like to hear about?

    Next week: Wasps!

    Earwigs: part I