DRIVEN POTTY BY WASPS

.. Hand me Sun Tzu - this is war!

I'VE INVESTED in a Top Bar hive which operates horizontally rather than vertically. I'm told honeybees much prefer this design and Prince Charles, self-styled protector of the environment and all things green, flogs them from his Highgrove Estate as well (for a King's Ransom!)

WASPS' NEST in the making

is almost a work of art

So when I handled and captured my first ever swarm of bees I slotted them in to the new Top Bar and, using solid boards called dummies, confined the swarm to a small portion of the hive to allow them time to develop and expand.
 Imagine my horror during the next inspection to find a bunch of wasps had moved in nextdoor ... if you remember I lost a weak colony of bees last year to the thieving raiders who launched unrelenting round-the-clock attacks. But this latest show of waspish hubris has taken their audacious nature to another level.
 I removed one perfectly formed nest from inside the roof of the Top Bar, see below and scraped off another which you can see in the image to the right.

CHEEK: This nest was found

underneath the roof

Admittedly there is something rather beautiful about their formation but a wasp is a wasp and should be swatted and squashed at every available opportunity.

 The wasps that hang around my apairy are the winged equivalent to the fox which stalks the hen and turkey houses, but while he moves silently, unseen around the farm these wasps like to be seen and heard.

PAPER WASP: Nest building using a mix of

saliva & paper

 I believe the chief tormentor of my apiary is the European Paper Wasp seen below skillfully crafting a nest out of paper and saliva for its young; a work of art it may be but as far as I'm concerned it's something Damien Hirst can stick in formaldehyde anytime.

 So I decided to do some reading up on how to combat the wasp and so reached out for ... Sun Tzu's The Art of War. 

OK, a few raised eyebrows out there I'm sure but his book 

is applicable to all aspects of life and there was some advice pertaining to my problems on the farm.

 One of Sun Tzu's pearl's of wisdom read: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” 

 And so now I am going to read up on the behaviour of the fox and the wasp. I really need to get into the mindset of my enemies as I am determined not to lose anymore poultry or bees to Nature's bad boys.

DEMENTOR: The nightmare of us poor muggles from 

the bee-keepingworld. Pic: B. Schurian, MfN

 I've started already and to my horror I've discovered there are around 200 different species of wasps out there designed to make our lives a misery one way or another and last week a new one was found; and just to reflect popular culture the little pest has been given the rather grand name of Ampulex Dementor after the soul-sucking creatures from the world of Harry Potter.

LIFTING THE LID: Inside the Top Bar

 And as you can see from the shot  taken above he even looks like one of the creepy, tortured souls that wreak havoc in the Harry Potter movies. 
Mercifully I won't need to rely on a Petronus Charm to see it off since it's resident in Thailand and not Jedburgh, phew.