Wasp Sucker Clears The Air

[Matthias Wandel] had something of a wasp problem so he built this trap to catch the pesky fliers. These look like Yellow jackets and they can build some huge nests (check out the picture of a 2-year old dwelling). We’ve experienced a large nest in the walls of an apartment and weren’t as clever at fixing the issue. [Matthias’] solution uses a 1/3 horsepower blower to snatch the wasps out of the air and retain them in the trap above. The trap sits on the blower with some insect netting as a filter, the hose acts as the inlet and is placed at the entrance to their lair. It took nine hours to fill this trap; we wonder where he chose to release them. Enemies of [Mr. Wandel] beware.

[Thanks Trebu]

83 thoughts on “Wasp Sucker Clears The Air

  1. Yep, wasps are a huge problem around here.

    Doesn’t help in the least that my mother claimed insects could kill me, and I watched Killer Bees as a child.

    Working through it, breathe, breathe.

    This ought to help, I bet I can raid an old vacuum cleaner for a suction motor.

    I personally would gas them with a bug bomb, maybe just me.

  2. “I have no sympathy for yellow jackets that do not produce honey, and sting!”

    Wasps pollinate plants and provide food for birds. They also kill several varieties of garden pests.

    I have several nests around my house and have generally found if you leave them alone, they will leave you alone.

    That being said, this was a LOT of wasps and I would not be comfortable with a nest that big in my house. I admire this humane way of capturing wasps, but I suspect he killed them afterwards – a real shame, and disrespectful of life.

    Humans pump billions of pounds of pesticides into the environment every year without regard to the consequences.

    I am sure I will be flamed as a tree hugger, wasp lover, etc. BUT – We can keep ignoring the consequences of killing everything we don’t like, what goes around comes around.

    Ok, flame on!

  3. “It’s not like there’s a shortage of the little pests.”

    There didn’t used to be a shortage of bees, or passenger pigeons, or innumerable other species. There is now.

    It’s called the “web of life” for a reason.

    “there’s no place like home to return to” – DEVO

    1. im surprised no one has suggested taking all the wasp/hornet/bee and extracting the venom to create a weapon 2 snuff out your fruitbar neighbor, when the cops come to your door you reply, “yea, i heard there was a wasp problem.” muahaha

  4. Hey vaporland,

    How far away do you have to transport wasps to make sure that they never find their way to the nest?

    Who wants to open the box of transportee wasps?

    Have you ever heard the phrase “carrying capacity of the land”?

    This is a better solution than three cans of wasp spray, and yet there are still critics. I suppose you can’t make everyone happy.

    I understand the “circle of life”, but I don’t plan on giving up being apex predator. And pests that threaten my friends and family will be killed without mercy.

    That being said, I did trap and relocate a squirrel in my attic. I took him 20 miles away (risking “illegal possession of wildlife”) and released him in a park in the middle of late winter. Away from his stashed food, and abandoned in other squirrel’s turf, I have to wonder if it would have been more humane to just have drowned him quickly in my bathtub and make Brunswick stew from his tasty hindquarters.

  5. I’d have put two plates either side of the trap entry tube hooked up to a EHT transformer.
    Every time a wasp gets drawn between there a crackle and there ya go ,, perfectly crisped wasp treat for the birdies no pesticides involved and as they bird food no hippy circle of life (or other lion king-esque phrase) broken either :D

    Crunchy wasp chips anyone :)

  6. Releasing these somewhere else will be no more humane than killing them. Yellowjacket wasps are eusocial. These are workers, and if they can’t find their way back to the nest they’ll just starve and die. Meanwhile, the queen and larvae in the nest will also starve and die without their workers. The only way to get rid of the nest without killing anything would be to physically relocate the nest, which is probably impossible in this case.

  7. I used to sleep with a large wasp nest next to my head. (lofted bed, drop down ceiling, hole in the insulation)
    We removed it with an old vacuum cleaner and all the hose extensions we could get. We turned on the vac and pushed the hose extension into the nest. The wasps attacked the extension and were quickly sucked in. Took about 5 minutes to suck up the entire nest. Then we stuffed a feather duster in the end before we turned it off. Most of the bees were killed inside the bag.

  8. “we wonder where he chose to release them” Hmm, probably the trash can, a few days later. I’ll have to try this sometime.

    Wasps and yellow jackets are inconsiderate punks. They build nests on MY stuff, and then they get pissed off and sting me when I actually want to use my stuff.

  9. There was a cartoon of the typical “Western Union Telegram” delivery man wearing a full beekeeper’s veil etc and pouring a jar of wasps, bees,hornets etc over the person standing in the house’s doorway.

    With a caption saying- STINGING TELEGRAM.

  10. The amount of people who can’t tell a bee from a wasp frightens me. Bees are good (usually) and make honey, wasps are bad (usually) and do not make honey. These are wasps.

  11. I can understand wanting to kill these things if youve ever been stung. but its just a defence mechanism.- if someone came at you waving there arms around, wouldnt you punch them?

    if you dont threaten them, you wont get stung. just try not to cross their paths..

    if someone came at you violently waving their arms around, wouldnt you punch them?

    due to us, these creatures have become endangered.
    thats not good, it interferes with the circle of life.
    release them somewhere with plenty of flowers

  12. Cut a regular 2L plastic pop bottle or any drinking water bottle into two, slicing it open about 1/3 of the way down from the top.

    Pour some beer, or some meat juice, or some sugar water, or some pop into the bottom, filling it about 20% full. Basically, anything that is sweet/succulant/yeasty will do. Beer + meat works very well.

    Put the upside down top on the bottom, so it makes a funnel. Tape it into place, or just let it sit.
    If you have water bottles, you can make dozens of these in a few minutes.

    Set them out around the area. Even the most wasp intensive outdoor area will become almost wasp free within an hour or two. They can’t get back out, and generally cook/drown in a short time.

    Totally silent – bees ignore – very effective.

  13. @Cynic

    If everything was that simple. Wasps, despite not producing honey, they are *minor* pollinators and great insect hunters.

    By killing wasps you are just allowing some other insects/bugs/worms to grow more. Those might be more prejudicial to humans than wasps.

  14. my general rule is “not in the house!” when it comes to bugs. they can be in the yard, the trees, etc. A secondary rule for me is flying stinging things must die… as long as they don’t bug me, I won’t kill them. If I found a nest like that in my house… I would just bomb it and be done… come back later and then remove the leftovers. After seeing this though… I may do the bug-zapper treatment in the box and turn them into bird food/fertilizer. My old solution was a super soaker to knock the nest down, but that wouldn’t help for one that’s IN the house. And maybe the rest of us should smoke wasp nests and then mail them to vaporland’s place to be disposed of humanely ;-)

  15. tryed this idea a long time ago when wasps set up nest in an old carpet my mum stashed in the undercover back yard. a few were sucked up the vacuum cleaner hose, but when aproaching the nest some scout wasps would fly at my fore head with out stinging me, with a thump. aparently this is the wasps was of telling other animals you are getting too near to my home zone, i did not know this at the time and ignored the signs. one wasp decided to sting me in the bridge of the nose. this left me with a black eye for a week.
    unfortunately i had to resort to wasp spray.
    shame on me.
    in general i believe we must work with nature, no against it.
    we humans are far too many and are the pest.
    animals have no choice but to interact with us because we are overflowing and encroaching on them.
    solution is simple. reduce population, by self limiting, by the law of logans run of risk killing the planet and us with it. period

  16. i don’t known why people think wasps are endangered its bees because of a combination of some type of might and pesticides and i think something els but honey bees are the ones threatened not wasps and we rely on honey bees so why would we want to kill. them and bees are less likely to sting because they die afterwards not like wasps that can sting multiple times and don’t make honey,i also think bees are being killed off by cars they people who have those hives in the boxes put them to close to roads last time i past some of those boxes it was splat splat splat like rain,but with bees.

  17. “Now of course, I could have just used a shopvac, but you don’t want to leave one of those running for hours on end, and then you can’t see your catch, and how the hell is one supposed to empty it?”

    Never. One never empties it and leaves the problem, like nuclear waste, for future generations and their advanced tech to deal with.

  18. Use shop vac, a variable timer (1-15 minutes), 2 gallons of water with a bit of dish soap (in the ship vac) and you have a self regulating yellow jacket disposal device. Don’t bother setting it up all day. Just run it for the last 2 hours before sunset when all the wasps will be returning.

    There will be several generations to kill. Larval development occurs over 20 days. So, keep it up for 25 days and extend the time to 4 hours the last week. The colony will shrink and then starve totally.

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