people often ask me how I collect and specifically place the northern paper
wasp I used them for protection for my honey bee apiary and look what happened
we had a storm last night we had an inch and a half of rain winds thunder
lightning I come out this morning and what's laying on the deck this little
paper wasp nest and these are the nurse wasps that are on it they're females and
they're attending to eggs and larvae in here so now what do we do can we pick
them up and put them somewhere else we sure can and that's what this video is
going to show this is the overhang of my bee Observatory shed and this is where
they fell from who knows where they were exactly attached because all the paper
came with them but I'm going to show you how to house and reattach them somewhere
of your choosing they're pretty passive I'm taking this
video very close to them of course it's early in the morning it's nice and cool
temperatures are gonna rise and I want to put them in some shelter before that
happens so let's go in the woodshop I have a scrap bin handy I'm just gonna
pull some scraps out of here and make a little shelter for them and attach it to
might be observatory building here it is I'm going to use hot glue high temp hot
glue by gorilla so I've stuck these parts together and we're gonna turn it
upside down I'm going to put a dab on it I'm gonna carry it out here and there it
is my little glob of hot glue which is now in the process of cooling the
gorilla hot glue has a longer working time so I can grab this little flange
with my forceps here and that will insulate the main part of this nest from
the heat of the glue so we're going to stick that right on there using these
forceps and I am wearing big logs just in case they're passive but they could
deliver a sting and they do it in a really low-key way they just land on you
and put their stinger in really slow and here let's take a close-up look of the
paper now one of the reasons it's building is Popular's because they use
the cellulose from it to make their nests and I want that I put these little
paper wasps nests around my apiary because they displace Yellowjackets they
don't like Yellow Jackets and neither do i because Yellow Jackets will eat my
bees but these paper wasps they don't eat
bees look at the larvae in the cells here you can see them moving around
there are eggs in there and I'm just positioning this because before I turn
it upside down again I want to make sure it's going to be attached correctly and
they feed these insect pests that they gather from your gardens the fields and
meadows they chew them up and bring them back the adult wasps we're looking at
here are only drink nectar they can't beat solid foods and I want this nest to
get bigger and I want more of them around because the more of these I have
around the fewer Yellowjackets all not around so here it is they're all in
place that was a very easy procedure now I'm gonna stick it here part of the
overhang but I'm gonna put it off to the side and you may be wondering why the
heck are you putting paper wasps right where people are gonna come and go well
I'm the only person generally who comes and goes for this building and they
won't even care I've had paper wasps of this species inside the building right
where I sit and take notes and observe my bees and their inner observation hive
behaviors so this is going to be in a perfect spot right here and because I
put these little side pieces on a nice cover for them they'll be able to come
and go and not be exposed to the weather and they can continue to raise their
baby wasps a couple of stainless steel screws
in here and we're all done I could probably use just one but I'm going to
put two in just for kicks rough cut lumber this is pine you can see the edge
of the pine trees still on it and I use this for a lot of my random projects
around dealing with insects and I have other boxes full of these in my apiary
they don't bother the honeybees and all now let's take a close-up look of an
edge you can see their eggs right in the closest cells and they have hexagonal
cells much like honey bees do only these instead of being made of wax are made
out of cellulose and their saliva fun huh this is the environment that they're
in we have a nice big meadow here some early linden trees there and the sun's
coming up let's take a closer look inside some of these cells we can see
this female worker is feeding the larvae they're the library move around and they
do as I mentioned before consume little caterpillars they can
- bugs spiders insect pests they get pre-chewed by these female workers so
when they go out and snatch something to feed these larvae they chew them up
first discard the feed and the non-essential
parts and then they just feed the little pellets of protein to these developing
larvae so here we are now look we've disrupted them we've reattached the nest
and they're very passive they don't even care that I'm here taking this video so
that's how you do it it wouldn't matter if there is a larger group early in the
spring you'll see a little pine cone shaped nest and sometimes they'll just
be getting started and you'll just see the Queen and then later on the workers
will hatch out and then they'll start taking over the duties of feeding this
larvae and looking them in there look at the eggs so what I'll do probably later
on give you updates on the nest as they develop and more hatch out and pretty
soon there's a bunch of fun but that's how you relocate a paper wasp nest I
appreciate that you took the time to watch this and Yellowjackets are little
jerks but when it comes to friendly wasps that you want to keep around these
northern paper wasps are fantastic thanks for watching have a great day