Today I put up the wasp traps, one on top of each beehive and one by the door to the veranda. I was reminded of the need to do this last night, when the Systems Administrator commented that the wasps were starting to be a nuisance, and on Sunday, talking to a customer at work who bought a wasp trap. From something he said to his companions I gathered that he kept bees, so I asked him if he did, and we all had quite a long and cheerful conversation about beekeeping. He is mentored by somebody I know in one of the neighbouring villages, and is in turn helping a novice friend, who last year lost all his honey and almost lost his bees to wasp attack.
Wasps don't bother bees in the early part of the year, but later on, at the same time as they become interested in sweet things and start ruining your plums (when you have any), they will go into hives to rob the honey. The entrance to a beehive is cut into a wooden block that runs the full width of the hive, and traditionally beekeepers removed the whole block in early summer, to give the bees more ventilation, but August is the time to replace it, to give the bees a small door that can be defended by just a few guard bees, like Horatio at the bridge. I leave the block in place all year, since my bees are on perforated mesh floors so I reckon they can get enough air through that. Until recently mesh floors were used in conjunction with a solid floor underneath, as part of a monitoring system to test the effectiveness of treatments against varroa, but in the last few years beekeepers have been using them as the only floor, the idea being that any mites that lose their grip and fall off the bee they are feeding on will fall through the floor and right out of the hive. It is still early days with open floors, and there isn't yet a consensus about the best way to use them at all points of the year, so I don't know if leaving a narrow entrance at all times would be frowned on by the experts, but my bees seem happy with it.
The customer at work bought a very handsome purpose made, coloured glass wasp catcher that cost £7.99. Mine were rather less grand, made out of plastic milk bottles with tinfoil over the neck, secured with a rubber band, and a hole a bit less than a centimetre square poked in the foil. I baited them with some 2010 strawberry jam that has started to crystallise and half filled them with water. The wasps crawl through the hole attracted by the sweet and fermenting smell, and generally don't find their way out again before they drown. Bees are not greatly into strawberry jam, so the theory is that they don't bother going in there. It worked last year, though I think I used an odd end of blackcurrant jelly.
Addendum The Systems Administrator is unexpectedly taken with the ice cream making machine. When I originally said I wanted one this was greeted with raised eyebrows, since you can buy a lot of Ben and Jerry's for the cost of an ice cream maker with inbuilt freezer, but now the SA is hooked. I came home from work on Sunday to find raspberry sorbet, and got back from my assorted errands this morning to find the mix for a cornflour based ice cooling in the fridge. That was the mark II mix, the first version having come to a bad end because it turned out that the SA had never learned how you boil milk without it catching, and was stirring the pan when suddenly black bits rose to the surface. I explained that you did not stir milk, but watched the bubbles ready to remove it from the heat at the point when it would otherwise rush up the pan and boil over, and promised a demonstration the next time boiled milk was required. Playing with an ice cream machine is at least a restful convalescent project. It was a very nasty bug, and the SA is still extremely pale, and needs to be fit to get to Lords by Thursday, for the first day of the Test.
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