Pic Wasp, Yellow Jacket & Hornet Trap

UPDATED REVIEWAs soon as I took this out of the box, I was immediately disappointed with how cheaply made this item seemed to be.( Update, went to local hardware store to examine their Bee Traps. They were more cheaply made than this one. So I have to upgrade to 3 stars based on my incorrect opinion of it being cheaply made. Compared to other traps, it is better made, believe it or not.)I tried the sugar water and pieces of watermelon with a cherry chopped up inside of it. In 2 days I caught exactly one fly which escaped when I opened the trap to clean it. I switched to organic apple juice and a teaspoon of honey and raw hamburger meat, which is what the company recommended. I caught 10 flies and about 50 small gnats in 3 days. But most of the flies and gnats were not dead, I had to submerge the trap in a 5 gallon bucket of water to drown the pests before opening the trap. So now I sticking my hands in a bucket of dirty water with rancid meat in it, not my idea of a good time.I tried Miller Lite Beer for 2 days and got nothing. Apparently bugs do NOT prefer Miller Lite. Who knew? An older gardener told me that I needed a full bodied beer. I have yet to buy that. I was basing the beer trial on other reviews.If you read the reviews where people say they caught bees, they will also mention that the bees were not dead and some of the bees were able to get back out of the many holes that are in the trap. That is my main complaint with this trap. Even if you by some miracle get the bees inside, they don't die. You will most likely have to submerge the trap in water to drown them or spray them with chemicals.UPDATE: ANOTHER REVIEWER SAID TO ADD A COUPLE OF DROPS OF DISHWASHER FLUID TO BREAK SURFACE TENSION OF WATER AND HELP THEM DROWN. I WILL TRY THIS.I had the trap hanging 5 feet from the wasps that I wanted to eliminate, but they were never interested in the trap or the various bait formulas I have tried.I think my bee is a "paper wasp" which is harder to catch than the usual bee. But they are supposed to like "nectar", according to the information I read. So I would have thought one of my sweet formulas would have worked.UPDATE: After almost one month, this trap is a good fly catcher with the sweet formulas. I only caught one wasp in one month of trying. I probably killed 80 flies in that same time and 150 gnats. So if you need a fly catcher, this will work with sweet formulas.

I tried baiting it with apple juice laced with Karo Syrup, root-beer,7-up, and fruit jams, all of which the wasps find attractive at our dinner table - but it was a no-go in this trap. In the trap's defense, I bought 3 different styles of traps and none of them was catching anything. Then I chanced upon the right bait and all three traps quickly filled with wasps & flies:Traps: mix solution in a large container and keep it in the garage fridge, refilling the traps with it as needed. Wasps cannot resist it, but honey bees are not attracted to it because of the vinegar.* 1 bottle beer* 2 TBS white or cider vinegar* 1 TBS lemon juice (I use the bottled kind from the grocery store)* ½ tsp dish detergentWasps love beer and are not deterred by vinegar, but honey bees hate vinegar so it keeps bees from accidentally getting lured into your traps. Only add a small amount of dish soap to avoid overpowering the smell of the bait. Less than a teaspoon is more than enough. The soap sticks to them and removes their protective coating. The acids in the vinegar and lemon juice then kill the wasp. That it also attracts and kills flies is the lagniappe that comes with this recipe.Spray their nests:* 1 gallon water* 1 cup dish detergent* 1 cup vinegar* ¼ cup lemon juice* ¼ cup peppermint extractThe detergent/vinegar/lemon kills the existing wasps in the nest. Wasps are absolutely repulsed by the scent of peppermint so any wasps who escaped will not return to the nesting area. Put solution into pressurized sprayer and spray nesting areas after dark when wasps have settled in for the night.I now keep small bottles with a couple cotton balls inside that are saturated with baby oil and peppermint oil near the gutter entries that the wasps favored and I've been wasp nest free for the remainder of the summer even though the traps continue to catch a couple wasps every day.4 stars because it isn't as easy to clean and the liquid needs refreshing more often than in my other traps, but if you keep a close eye on it, it does as good a job keeping down wasp and house fly populations as the far more expensive glass traps.

We have a lot of yellowjackets and hornets on my acreage and I have been experimenting with multiple styles of traps that I check on every day and frequently tend. These traps work very well, but they require a little more maintenance due to the fact that once the bottom fills with the yellowjackets/hornets they are able to fly out of the trap on the corpses of their miserable comrades. I have tried all kinds of baits and there are some good ones listed in these reviews, but the best bait I have found so far is to use a spoonful of the brown chicken fat you get on rotisserie chickens with a spoonful of wet catfood. These seem to work much better than the sweet smelling baits and you also catch a lot of flies that also attract the pests. I rotate the traps until they fill up at the bottom. Once they fill up some of them will begin to escape because they can walk out on top of the pile. That is not a reason to panic because once they identify a food source they will return and bring the rest of the mob back with them so put them in the freezer overnight, clean it out, and bait it again and hang in the same spot. You will catch them eventually. Overall, if you are willing to try different baits these are pretty effective traps. Try the chicken fat (that brown jelly stuff you get on a rotisserie) and thank me later!The main downside of these traps is that they are not deep enough so they fill quickly to the bottom holes, but as I said above they do get a lot of traffic!