Laurence Edwards shows how wasps burrow into poly nucleus hives through tiny syrup leaks at the entrance. Paint poly hives, repair nicks with polyfiller, and eliminate spills to prevent them. The newer Langstroth Polynucleus with a removable feeder stops leaking better than older National versions.
In this video, we're going to talk a little bit about the problems with wasps at this point in the year, how to avoid them burrowing in, and what to do if you find it happening. So what's really nice to see at the moment is we finally had a couple of days of nice weather and the bees have found the ivy and they are streaming back in with nectar and pollen, doing really, really well. But as soon as I drove into this apiary, I noticed a big cluster on the front of this colony here and I thought, that's a bit weird. Why are they clustering up and not moving like that? But if you zoom in a little bit and take a look right around Around here, there's a big cluster of wasps, and they're not just clustering up, they are in fact burrowing in and chewing the poly and discarding the poly and trying to get inside to get to the bees' honey stores. Now, I normally don't have an issue with wasps. I keep my colonies strong, I make sure I don't spill any syrup when I'm feeding, I keep the entrances small, particularly towards the end of the year, and by doing those 3 things, I find that I never have wasps overcome a colony and completely take them down. Now in this instance here, if the wasps had tried to get into the entrance, the bees would just see them away immediately because they've got so many bees compared to the amount of invading wasps that are coming in. Now the wasps here think that they've pulled a fast one over the bees. They're thinking that if they burrow in next to the entrance, the bees aren't fussed and they're just letting them get on with it. Little do they know, as soon as they actually make it into the hive and they create a new entrance, the bees will obliterate them. So I'm not worried in terms of the wasps taking over this colony and damaging the bees, but I am really concerned about the wasps coming in and actually causing damage to my poly hive. Poly hives are not cheap, and this is one of the downsides in terms of poly. They're nowhere near as durable as wood, and they can be subject to insect damage by wasps trying to burrow in. So my first tip, and the tip that I've not followed myself yet this year on these, is that it's best to paint your poly hives. Painting does seem to put them off. Gives them that protective barrier on the outside, and in my experience does slow things down a little bit. The next tip to try and avoid this happening to you is to make sure that you don't spill any syrup. And you really shouldn't be spilling syrup at any point in the year, but especially late on in the season, kind of back end of September, early October, when you're doing your final feeds, really can cause a little bit of a robbing frenzy, but it can also attract the wasps. And then the final one, and the one that I've definitely been caught out a little bit with on this one, I think, is that if you get any nicks or damage in your poly, you need to get in there immediately and try and fill them. Poly hives have a really hard exterior, and as soon as you break down into that exterior, it becomes very soft and pliable underneath that surface layer. So as soon as you break that surface area, that nice crisp finish, you give the wasps a way to get in. That's what's happened here. I had a little bit of damage outside the front when I was attaching my entrance disc, I've not gone back in and I've not fixed it, and that's what's given the wasps access to get inside and start burrowing away. Now another really interesting comparison between some of the nuclei that are in this apiary here is that this is the old-style Payne's nuc. So it's a National Payne's nuc with an integrated feeder. Can't take that feeder out, it's integrated within the box, and that means that the wall of the box and the wall of the feeder is one and the same. This means that in minute quantities, when you're putting that syrup into the feeder, it leaches through the poly and the wasps can sense that on the outside and they're getting minute traces of syrup and they're thinking, you know what, the more I burrow in through this wall, the more syrup I'm getting. I'm gonna continue, I'm getting a tasty treat. Whereas on the Langstroth Polynucleus from Payne's, the feeder is separate, which means that you have an air gap between the exterior wall and the wall of the feeder, which means that you don't get that syrup transfer. I've not had this problem on a single one of the Langstroth version of this nuc, and I do get the problem occasionally going into winter on the National version where that feeder is integrated. So it is another reason for Payne's to try and get that removable feeder into the National version. It would completely eliminate this problem. So what am I going to do about it? I'm afraid I'm just going to have to squish those wasps. They will just continue burrowing in there until they get inside and access that feeder, and it will make the repair job a lot Harder once they get inside, so I'm afraid they're going to get the squish. So I've squished all the wasps that were burrowing in. I filled it up temporarily with a bit of a leaf just to stop any signals coming out, and I'll come back later on in the year. Really simple fix, exterior-grade polyfiller or any type of wood filler, mush it in, smooth it over, paint the nucs, which I should have done in the first place, and just pray that Paints eventually release a removable feeder on the National Nucs.
