Adventures in Natural Beekeeping

Aug. 17…Please don’t sting me!!! This wasp wouldn’t stop crawling on my fingers while I was trying to bury crab shell in the garden.

That wasp didn’t sting me, but the one in my glove did. A little mud works wonders.

I decided I’d better wear a bee suit to keep the wasps off me. Wasps are carnivores. Maybe they eat the soft parts of the crab remains, but they always gather around whenever I pop the lid open. Lately they’ve taken to crawling on me as well.

August 16, I just got the largest single day load of crab shell ever. I can’t have wasps holding up the process. Bury the crab shell. Plant directly on it four days later. We will plant beets, winter lettuce, and more turnips on this batch.

Aug. 20… Beets on left, turnips in middle, Sue plants winter lettuce on right. (Yes Pat, you did remember to put ashes under the beets.)

Planted 4 days after burying crab shell, hoops up, deer netting on, let’s watch you grow. 🙂

Oct. 5…Beets are already bigger than the ones we planted a month before. It must be the crab shell.

Oct. 6…Those turnips might be crowding out the lettuce, but we’re happy everything is growing so well.

July 1…I spotted this Ancistocerus antilope wasp getting into my Mason bee tubes. I relocated them in the house immediately. I hope the wasp didn’t lay many eggs in any tubes before I moved it, or I’ll be hatching wasps in the back bedroom.

I shot some video on the Warre hive just to make sure what was going into the hive were wasps. Yes, there were some robber bees, but mostly wasps.

August 7…The numbers of bees at the entrance of the hive has been lessening. Looking down at the pile of dead bees, I notice there are mostly drones, but there are also some dead wasps.

August 7…I picked up a couple of dead wasps from the pile in front of the Warre. Did the bees kill them? I doubt it. There were very few bees left.

This hive (the one on the right) was real active back in June, and heavy with honey weight. What happened?

Most of the comb was empty like this. No eggs, no larva, spotty drone cells. We might have had a laying worker.

This is what the wasps were after…a comb or two of honey.

After removing most of the comb, I put these top bars out for the bees to clean them off, but where are the bees? These are all wasps!

August 16…Wasps are in search of sugars. Here’s one on the blackberries.

Sadly, Bee-atrice log hive is infested with wasps too.

Bee-atrice log hive…Looking through the observation window, we see the final indignation…wasps are roaming at will inside. We must remove the comb. I won’t kill the wasps, but I don’t want to grow their numbers by feeding them honey.

What’s the bee suit for? There aren’t any bees, but a bunch of wasps. The wasps didn’t attack me like the bees would have, but I had already been stung once as an accident. With that many wasps flying around, I wasn’t taking any chances.

This is where the ground nest is, in the laurel hedge area. My wife discovered it when she was coaxing the cat out. Luckily, she only got stung once.
In the video you can see how fast they move…at least twice as fast as a honeybee.

July 8…We won’t be killing the wasp nest. Wasps are good for the garden. My wife spotted this wasp flying into the cabbage to rid us of the cabbage worm. We haven’t seen ANY this year. In years’ past, we would have to painstakingly pull little green worms off the seedlings.
The wasps didn’t kill my bee hives…they just took advantage after the bees had died out.