It’s early June and the bugs are really coming out to play in earnest.  My Bug-A-Salt is primed and ready, but more than that is my bee catcher.  I have four of these out and filled with the bee juice that attracts yellow jackets and you should have yours out as well.

I don’t like yellow jackets and this fall, when we are deer hunting you will know all too well just how annoying they can be.  They buzz into your ears and mouth and nostrils and worst of all, they get in your bowl of posole and if you don’t wait for them to drown, you might just get stung!

Right now is the time to be catching yellow jackets, because the little ones have not hatched yet and you will be catching the queens and each queen produces a nest, so in essence you are catching nests of yellow jackets right now!  Get to it!

The very best yellow jacket trap I have found to date is the yellow ones that take a small vial of attractant.  The attractant costs quite a bit considering what you are getting, but I have done some research and I believe the guys that sell it have done their homework and it’s worth the money.

Oh, and don’t be duped by the 3 in 1 catch all type of traps that are made by the same company that makes the yellow ones.  Even though the 3 in 1’s are yellow too, they DON’T WORK.  I bought some a few years back thinking how cool it would be to catch yellow jackets, hornets, flies and everything else annoying and they flat out did not work.  I even took a month and did a daily study with the yellow traps along side the 3 in 1’s and all the 3 in 1’s caught in one months time was a box elder bug and a couple of moths.  I wrote the company with my results and trusted them to do the right thing and take them off the market..instead they flooded the market with the ones they had made and have been soaking people ever since.

So, back to my story here:  That vial of attractant is a mixture that emits an odor or sexual something that gets the yellow jackets all excited to get closer to and that is why they get into the traps.  Once they are inside they can’t find the hole that they crawled up through in order to get out and they buzz around inside the trap until they dehydrate and die.  Dead yellow jackets are the best!

This trap has been out for 3 weeks and I emptied it once.  You can see a line of dead bees in the bottom and some live ones buzzing around inside.  Look closely at the size of them badboys (badgirls)….

Each queen can produce up 4,000 or more little ones…so you do the math!  Get out and put your traps out and maybe we can collectively make a dent in their population!

Bears Butt

June 3, 2013