Subject: Re: Low honey yield in S. Ontario

From: [email-masked] (Evan E. Twombly)
Date: 05 Oct 1995 03:23:23 GMT

Doug Nagy wrote

>One thing I think may be a factor is that there are alot of yellow-jacket 
>hornets around the hives and general vicinity, I think that they maybe
robbing 
>the honey.  Does this happen?

yellow jackets and hornets are carnivores.  I have see a yellow jacket steal
a piece
of spam off of a plate and before he could lift off, a Bald face hornet came
in and
killed him (via decapitation) and flew away.

Yellow jackets around a bee hive usually are looking for the dieing bees that
are
crawling away from the hive.  If it is a GOOD year for yellow jackets they
may
be starving and will then go for the healthy bees.

Any of the commercial yellow jacket control traps will work.  But use meat as
a
bait.  The jackets will be attracted but bees ignore it.

Evan

---

From: Ted Fischer <[email-masked]>
Date: 6 Oct 1995 17:12:19 GMT

>Evan
While the yellow jacket is certainly a carnivore, in the fall at least it will avidly go after sugars too.  I recently had an experience in which I set out a comb partially filled with honey outside my honey house.  Several hours later, when I noticed it, it was packed with hundreds of yellow jackets, but not one single honeybee dared approach!  They opened and devoured much of the comb in that time.