In this instructional video, Laurence Edwards explains how beekeepers can prevent wasp predation on honeybee colonies without relying on wasp traps. He describes the seasonal behavior of wasps, which shift from protein hunting to seeking sweet resources like honey, leading to rapid recruitment and colony loss, especially for small nucs and splits. Edwards outlines a two‑step core prevention method: maintain strong, healthy colonies and provide a small, easily defended entrance (e.g., an under‑floor entrance). He details how to time and size splits—early‑season splits can be very small, while late‑season splits should contain three to four frames of brood and be packed with bees, preferably moved to a new apiary to encourage defensive foraging. As a backup, he offers an emergency technique for severely attacked nucs: close the nuc, relocate it within the apiary for 24 hours to disorient wasps, place a high‑efficiency wasp trap where the nuc was, then return the nuc after the trap has cleared wasps. Edwards cautions against proactively placing traps in apiaries, arguing that they attract wasps and exacerbate the problem. The overall message is that strong colonies with defendable entrances, proper split management, and minimal trap use effectively eliminate wasp issues.
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In this video, I'm going to show you how to stop wasps decimating your honeybee colonies without setting traps. So I've seen this all over social media— people baiting up traps, putting them in their apiary, attracting wasps to their apiary, killing lots of different pollinators to try and help their small nucs and splits cope with the onset of wasps. Now, at this time of the year, wasps really do become an absolute nightmare. As soon as they stop rearing their own young and going out and searching for protein, they turn into survival mode and they go for anything that's sweet and sticky. So wasps going for honey is a natural choice for them, and if they can get themselves into a colony, they will be straight in there and they will be stealing honey. As soon as you get any sort of frantic activity outside a hive with a number of wasps, all of the passing-by wasps see that activity, they join in, and it gets exponentially out of control. And then before you know it, your small split or your nuc has been completely decimated by wasps. Now, within all of my apiaries, I don't use a single Wasp trap. Not to say that I've never done it in the past, and I will keep it to the end of this video, a little tip or trick if you do have a small nuc or a split that's struggling really badly. But the method that I use for stopping wasps becoming a nuisance is making sure that the colony is strong and making sure that the entrance is small. If you put those 2 steps into practice, wasps just are not a problem for honeybees. A big strong colony can protect itself all the way throughout the year. And if you give them an easily defendable entrance, like an underfloor entrance, then it makes it even easier for the bees to defend their colony. So you don't need to reduce the entrance down to a single bee space. You don't need to put up wasp traps within your apiary. All you need to do is make sure that you make your splits nice and early in the year when the wasps are going after the protein. If you start making up your splits late on in the year, you need to make sure that the splits that you're making up are very, very strong and able to cope with the onset of that wasp onslaught. So for example, if you're making up some splits in May, you can go ahead and you can make up a split with a single frame of brood and a single frame of stores. Shake in some bees, move it to a different apiary if you want an easy life, do it in your own apiary if you want to balance them a little bit more, but you're safe at that time of the year to make really, really small splits and let them build up naturally. By the time the wasps become a problem, kind of like around here, it's middle of July, early July maybe, that 1-frame split has built up probably to a 6-frame split and it's nice and strong and they're able to cope with the onslaught of wasps. If you're making up your splits in August, you need to make sure that I would say you're using a minimum of 3 or 4 frames of brood, and you need to absolutely pack that colony full of bees. And my preference is to move that to a new apiary. That means that every single bee that you're putting in that nuc into that split, you're taking it to a new apiary, and then all of those bees reorientate, and then all of those bees can essentially defend the new colony. If you're doing it in the same apiary, the older, tougher forager bees generally go back to the original hive and leave the younger nurse bees that aren't as good at coping when the wasps set in. If you follow those steps and couple that with a good entrance, like an underfloor entrance, you never ever have to worry about wasps. Like, it just doesn't become an issue. And you see that the wasps are there because the second that you pull a frame out, you see the wasps come in. They're going all over the frame. You might see 1 or 2 wasps in the colony, and the bees seem to tolerate 1 or 2 wasps. It's when it gets up to like kind of like a good number of wasps, they seem to take action and start getting into battle mode. But for us, it's just not an issue. Keep your colony strong, keep the entrances small, easily defendable, and then you will not have a problem with wasps. Now I said I'd give you a little bonus tip at the end of this video in terms of if you do have a small nuc, you do have a small split, and they are being absolutely battered by wasps. The only way I found to deal with that is to close the nuc up, take it somewhere else in the apiary. The bees for 24 hours will be fine in that nuc. There'll even probably be some wasps in there as well. They get very, very disorientated, and the bees will kill those wasps. And then in place of where the original nuc was, that's where you need to put your wasp trap. So you're only putting a wasp trap in your apiary when there is a severe wasp problem. Proactively putting wasp nests in your apiary, in my view, is asking for trouble. It's saying to the wasps, come down here, there's something nice, and then they know there's an apiary there and they're just going to predate on those bees and the honey. If you do find yourself in that scenario where you've got a small nuc or a split, They're being absolutely hammered. You know, within 24 hours it's game over for that colony. Close them up, take it to somewhere else in the apiary, put a good quality, high efficiency wasp trap in the place of the colony, and within an hour you will be amazed at the amount of wasps that have gone inside it. And the way that wasps work, as I said before, is as soon as you see activity in that chamber, it gets the wasps even more excited and they think, that's where I need to be. And before you know it, you've got a bucket full of dead wasps in that trap. Come the end of the night, you shouldn't have any activity there at all. All of the forager bees would have kind of gone into other hives around them. All of the wasps will be dead. And then what you can do is you can just put the nuc back into position and open it up again. Go back down there, check it the next day. They should be okay. If they're not okay, rinse and repeat. Do the same thing again. You'll be amazed. A couple of iterations of that and it really should give them the ability to defend themselves. However, all it is is a sticking plaster. And until you get that colony up to a point where it can defend itself, it really does need some sort of protection. And in my view, the only way to give it that sort of protection is to make sure you never have nucs or splits at that size at the time of the year where wasps become a problem.
