Friday, September 15, 2017

Problem in the Vineyard

A few days ago, we went out into the vineyard to sample grapes for determining the Brix level and found a rachis totally stripped of its grapes. In the past, I've blamed turkeys for this type of evidence left in the vineyard, but this time, the stripped rachis was in a wedding bag, so, turkeys were not to blame. Instead, there was a small hole in the wedding bag and in the bag were yellow jackets!
My husband and I were both stunned to see how yellow jackets could peck a hole into an organza
wedding bag and totally devastate a cluster of grapes. We saw yellow jackets in the netting here and there but, we were not aware as to the extent of damage the yellow jackets could do to our grapes. It was time for action.
My husband looked on line to see what we could do to get rid of these destructors. He made up an apple cider, sugar water solution with an old banana peel and put it into an empty water bottle and he also went to get some pheromone traps. My husband corrected me on this, the trap is not a pheromone trap, it is an attractant trap for yellow jackets. We went back to the vineyard to set up these traps. The apple cider, sugar water trap was not as effective at trapping yellow jackets, but two days later, the attractant trap had yellow jackets.

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