Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Couldn't quite decide what heading to put this under. Perhaps we need a Pest/bug/disease headding.

Anyway, I just got up to the family place here in Alden, Michigan, USA. (This is where I got my first real experience at water gardening and helped re-build a nice ornamental garden pond.)
http://www.tclynx.com/showoff/showoff.shtml Here is a web page with some pictures of the pond from last summer.

Well, having a look around the place and Mom asked if I could help with the pond by adjusting the waterfall (normal since things shift each year.) Anyway, we were noticing a lot of wasp or hornet activity and realized that there must be a nest behind some of the rocks around the pond. No way to spray without getting it in the pond. There are fish and frogs in the pond.

The wasps don't seem as aggressive as I would expect yellow jackets to be so I'm not immediately in panic mode but they can't stay. The pond is right in front of the front porch and entrance into my cousin's store "Grandma's Parlor". Too many people in and out to leave them be.

What are the options without killing the pond eco-system. About the only ideas we have right off include.
Wait till dusk and dump a pot of boiling water on the spot (some issues there since it will be hard to direct it into the nest rather than just splashing off the rocks into the pond.)
Get a jar of Diatomaceous Earth and sprinkle heavily around the entrance. (Perhaps not immediately effective but won't hurt the fish. Drawback being that I didn't bring any with me and don't know if I can find it quickly locally.)

Any ideas of anything that might drive them off without endangering the fish pond?

Dude I would just leave them be, mud wasps are so well tempered. We had an entrance to there hive end up right near the entrance to our home. Well after a few days of constantly walking right over the hole they decided to build a new entrance out of the way. We kinda squashed the original hole, so maybe that was why they moved it I'm not sure. But, we never got stung only mildly harassed. They wouldnt follow us more than a few feet from their hole.

If it was just us, I would totally leave them, unfortunately, this garden pond is kind of an attraction right in front of a store my cousin runs. Too many people freak out about wasps and bees, that we can't really have a large active nest right at the entrance. I'm not sure what type of wasps these are but I'm sure I'll be finding out how aggressive they are soon as I need to get into the pond and adjust the waterfall soon.

They aren't mud daubers. The nest is in some dry dirt behind the rocks around the side of the pond.

I'd probably leave them bee as well but then I'm loving all the insect activity in the yard this year.

As for DE, you could likely find it at any garden center. The "Concern" brand I've seen at the local garden centers is supposed to be food grade so easily usable for your purposes.

here's two solutions.

The first is the one i use more often than the other.

Set a vacuum hose just out next to the hole and let her run for an hour or two. every wasp returning to the nest gets sucked in and after a couple of hours there are barely any left to worry about. Tear the nest apart and get rid of it. Couple of things to remember. There are going to be some ticked of wasps in that there vacuum. Don't open it until you are pretty darn sure they are dead. I use a wet/dry vac and i take a long sock and put it over the inlet from the hose on the inside of the canister (i use a ruubbr band around the sock to hold it on the inlet 'tube'). Fill the canister with a couple of inches of water. I make sure the sock is long enought to reach the water so it's wet. The wasps get sucked into the sock where they drown quickly

Method two is to use a mister filled with vegetable oil. Not sure how the oil will effect the pond but it has to be less than a pesticide. Sit near the hole and spray the wasps as they come in. The oil smothers them pretty quickly. It's amazing how close you can sit next to the hole without them flying at you. depending on the size of the nest, it should take roughly 1/2 hour to dispose of the nest.


Poppa

Great ideas Poppa. My preference is to leave things alone but we had them in a window frame last year and either of those options would have been good. Sometimes they can be too close for comfort...

From what i read around here is no oil near fish water. ever.

i forget why. I think for the same reason the bugs dont like it. It suffocates the fish.

Yea, the oil is generally a bad idea around fish.

The vac idea is a good one though.

Luckily, when I was watching the area today, it seems that there is no nest. The wasps that were hanging out there yesterday may either have been searching for a nest site or there might have been some "wasp food" like dead bug or something back behind the rock and they were collecting food for the nest. I think I saw a nest around the other side of the house and I won't tell since I don't think it is in a bad place.

The only hornets I saw around the pond today were mud daubers collecting mud and water for nest building elsewhere. I have no fear of the mud daubers around the pond as they are totally non-aggressive in that situation even when harassed. Back when I built the pond I remember swatting at them with a fly swatter and they never came at me.

I'll keep the vac idea in mind for future situations where I can't just leave them bee.

Fire.

Get one end of a good sized log burning in a fire that was started without lighter fluid. Walk it over and toss it on top of the nest. Run! The nest should be destroyed.

No chemicals and you get to burn stuff.

Win, win...

We actually talked about using fire. We were thinking like a butane torch.

There was one main thing that stopped us from attempting fire. Rubber pond liner.

I have a feeling throwing a log on the "where we though there was a nest" wouldn't have worked very well since there are rocks there, it's at an angle, and the log would probably have simply rolled into the pond.

cool ideas.

dont know much about the different varieties of wasps, but the one that is a problem here is the european wasp. Curse the person or freight that introduced it to our country. They are a true scavenger of a wasp and aggressive as crap.

when we had to remove a nest and my parent place, the info that was given to us was to dust it (obviously not suggesting that here) but an interesting tid bit was to do it at night and use a red filter over the torch. apparently their vision does not extend into the red spectrum (a trade off for being able to see into the UV? )

LOL first time i was stung by one was actually IN europe, austria actually, and it was just as we were getting on the bus for a two hour trip. 4 or 5 stings in a row and quite a bit of pain.

I'm all for living creatures, but there are a few AGGRESSIVE ones that just dont make it into my "love the animals" category. Euro wasps are one of them.

I was waiting for a fire comment from you steve

Use the DE. Safest all round.

Around here the bad one is the ground dwelling yellow jackets.

I generally will not use poison around the house at all with just a couple exceptions (away from the AP system of course), spiders I know to be dangerous (around our house it is black widow spiders as they like to nest is places we tend to stick our fingers without checking first.) And if we were to have a yellow jacket nest around.

And the advice to deal with wasps in the evening is good. When they settle down for the night, you can usually get most of them with reduced risk to yourself.

LOL, just did a wiki search..........the yellow jacket and the one i'm talking about are the same

If you have a wasp nest around your pond rocks, why dont you just flood them out?