I was reading thru the "Florida Grower" and Agricultural magazine and they had an article about "benefical wasps". Well, benifical to who, as the citrus growers release them to kill off "pests", ie butterfly larva, such as the Giant Swallowtails that lay their eggs on citrus.
They were advising on plants that attracted these "benefical wasps" (that eat butterfly caterpillars ! ) and many of us have these very same plants in our gardens.
Sunflowers and Herb, especially Dill, Fennel, and Cilantro, provide nectar/pollen that attract these wasps.
Course the Eastern Black Swallowtails use the Dill/Fennel and Parsley as their host plants. I think these may be why I suddenly lost over 25 BST cat's in what seemed a day! I think they will be coming in as soon as I see the eggs next time. I just had about 15 but didn't have much Dill/Fennel, they did all get pretty big as I've hidden the pots under some shrubs as soon as I saw the eggs.
And Sunflowers, well, we're really thinking hard about planting them again. We had about 35 Giant Sunflowers this year and have been drying the heads for the seeds to feed to the birds.
And I won't be keeping Dill/Fennel near my milkweed again!
Are you attracting wasps with the plants you have?
Thanks for sharing. Yes, we have many wasps this summer.
There is another thread here about those wasp traps which I am trying out that may be of interest to you too.
Oh, well, we're not even messing around with them. Got some commercial stuff called "Bee Booper". We're spraying any nests we see, it kills them instantly. Doesn't stop the ones coming over from the citrus grooves which are many around here. But we also are probably not going to plant sunflowers again. The Dill/Fennel situation will have to be dealt w/ differently tho.
I wonder if that stuff kills the butterflies too?
Bee Booper is a spray you spray right on the wasp nest. It shoots a very straight stream. Hit the nest, and any wasp on it dies immediately. You could destroy the nest in any fashion you wanted but if you don't kill the wasp then they will just build a new nest and continue to eat the buttefly lava. We're very careful w/ spraying not to get it on any of the plants. Since we've been using the Bee Booper, we've had a lot less wasps and I'm seeing a lot more Monarchs and more Giant Swallowtails. A lot more butterflies in general . We've only got about 10 more sunflowers to harvest also, and found two nests on the fence near some bushes where the sunflowers are planted and we sprayed them also.
Thanks for the details. Sounds like something I need. Did you get it at the garden center? Home Depot?
I'm not sure where to get it retail.