The Wasp Trap

Readers of this blog are aware that I have a bit of a wasp problem at my house right now.  The nest is inside the overhang of my roof and I can't easily access it, nor can I even see it.  With a ladder and some time messing around I can probably get to it, but I'm not really interested in messing with it with a bunch of wasps flying around.  :-)  At the moment I'm trying to reduce the wasp numbers with hopes of getting up in the overhang soon.  Both of my daughters have been a tremendous help building and re-baiting the wasp traps.  They also love checking them out to see how many wasps there are.  So here are our traps.

The trap is very simple.  You take an empty two liter soda bottle.  Cut off the top, invert it, and shove it into the big part of the bottle.  The nozzle is facing downward now.  Next fill the bottle with the bait.  I use water mixed with a couple of spoonfuls of sugar and fill it about a 1/4 full.  Then I line just the nozzle with maple syrup.  Finally I spread just a bit of vegetable oil along the inside above a the nozzle to make it more slippery for the wasps.  Change your bait every day!

We've been going 2+ weeks now and filling the bottles with 30 - 40 wasps each day before emptying them.  Here's the evidence.

This has been a great science experiment to do with my daughters.  They love checking the traps and re-baiting them.  They ask everyday if they can help!  The next step is to eventually get up and dig out the nest.  Given the number of wasps we've killed, the size of the nest terrifies me a bit!