will tell you guys a trick I have learned this year. We all know or should know that Yellow Jackets are great hunters around your plants. So I have learned when I forget to turn of my garden hose and it leaks a into the mud overnight the Jackets come all day long and take a drink or do whatever they do with the water. Then they fly around my plants and hunt. After seeing this I let my hose drip 24/7 for the jackets will come. They like the water in the mud. Part 2 to the story I was at the nursery and seen the yellow jackets traps. So I bought one. Inside the traps there is a tube with some kind of yellow jacket sint that atracts them to the traps. I put some drops of this on that wooden frame I made around my plants. I shit you not I have about 5 jackets around my plants or waterhole everytime I go out there. I noticed the more days you let your hose drips more jackets come. It must be like the local water source or something. I love it when they hover around my plants hunting. What am I thinking? 1, does the sint in the traps harm them? I would think not but not sure. 2, What insects do yellow jackets hunt and eat? will they kill catapilers? 3, Has anyone tried this to bring yellow jackets in?
This year some crazy mud dobber type wasp started a little bowl shaped nest on my screened in porch not far from my girls... My first instinct was to get the raid, but as i sat smoking, stoned, hesitating killing the damn thing, here it came with a "silkworm" in hand... or mouth/hands.. I couldn't believe my eyes, She just shoved that lil fucker in there so quick! and within 3 mins was back with another one! Needless to say that i let her continue her hunt uninterrupted. She built a bunch of nests and i believe her children are now building nests in the same spot and they seem to ONLY eat those little green inchworms or silkworms if you will. Since some of the plants in the garden are MASHED UP from caterpillars this year, i have decided the lil stinging bastard have become an ally and a precious recourse, kinda like lady bugs on steroids... SOO im thinkin, wiki wiki A wasp is a predatory, flying, stinging insect, with a stinger and membranous forewings and hindwings. It is related to ants and bees, with all of them being members of order Hymenoptera, but is separated from ants and bees by having a stinger and no hair; bees have hair. A rough definition of the term wasp is any member of the aculeate family Vespidae. Almost every pest insect species has at least one wasp species that preys upon it, making wasps critically important in natural control of their numbers, or natural biocontrol. Parasitic wasps are increasingly used in agricultural pest control as they prey mostly on pest insects and have little impact on crops.