Wasp-catcher

Since Bean was stung by a wasp she has continued to snap at the steady stream of the pests that fly around Chez Mima. I decided to tackle the problem at source. I can’t find a nest anywhere…an impossible task on a property chock full of nooks and crannies. 

So I’ve made a wasp catcher. It’s an ingenious do-it-myself design, passed on by a friend who had a wasp problem last summer. She hung something similar to this in the sunshine and had barely a wasp anywhere else all year. 

Apparently at the end of the season the inside of her contraption was a revolting sludge of dead wasps (some rotten) and the sweet mixture that attracts them in. I look forward to that.

The mixture which lures the insects is made up of old apple jelly (2018 vintage) and water. 

The piece of pipe going through the container has a wasp-sized hole drilled into it directly above the liquid, which allows wasps in, but via which they can’t escape (apparently). The hole is too small for bees to get in.

I’m hoping for great things. And it didn’t cost me a cent.

It’s been another glorious busy day. Among other things I cut down another (smaller) tree. This was a rogue plum which I never invited to grow here but which had flourished in the last six years, in the wrong place. It had to go.

I potted up 11 strawberry plants from the trough where I regularly grow them. This year they will grow in individual pots in the tunnel house…far far away from any hungry possums, which have devastated the trough.

Yesterday’s sinkhole cake hasn’t made it to the freezer. I had a chunk with bottled apples and yoghurt for lunch. Yum.