Butterfly-predacious hornets

[Kenelm Philip]

	There is one painless way to remove large numbers of yellowjackets
from an area. Get a baking pan and fill it with water, adding a bit of
detergent. Then put something in the middle of the pan (an upside-down
glass, for example) and drape a piece of raw bacon over it. Put the pan
on something high enough that dogs and cats can't get the bacon.

	One year that there was a yellowjacket outbreak in Fairbanks, such
a trap killed over 1100 yellowjackets in four days. I then discovered a
large nest in a spruce tree about 25 feet from the trap--and the nest was
deserted. The numbers of yellowjackets coming in to the trap suddenly
dropped off--so my assumption is that this one nest was taken out.

	On the other hand, during major outbreaks there are so many nests
that taking out one or two makes no appreciable difference except in their
immediate neighborhood. And since yellowjackets also consume pests like
aphids and various defoliators, you don't really want to wipe out yellow-
jackets.

							Ken Philip
fnkwp at aurora.alaska.edu