Bottle-Adaptable Wasp and Hornet Trap

01 · HOW IT GOES TOGETHER

Four steps, and one involves a knife

Worth knowing there is some handwork involved: you have to cut the bottle. Pour the attractant in, make a cross-shaped cut with a craft knife, fit the trap into that cut and hang it up. The detail most often missed is the orientation: the plastic rod beside the entrance must point downwards, because that is where the wasp lands to go in. Fitted the wrong way round, the trap loses much of its point.

02 · THE BOTTLE MATTERS

It has to be rigid, not just any bottle

Here it is worth being more precise than is usually said: any rigid plastic bottle will do, not any bottle. Soft drink bottles, with their thicker PET, grip well and hold their shape; thin water bottles distort when you fit the trap and end up not sealing, so the wasp goes in and comes back out. That is the difference between a trap that works on its own and one you keep having to reseat. And since the bottle is the consumable, when it gets dirty you swap it and the adapter carries on.

03 · WHERE AND WHEN TO HANG IT

In the sun, above a metre, out of the wind

The site changes the result more than the model of trap does. It works best in a sunny spot facing south, more than a metre off the ground and sheltered from wind — hung from a branch, a post or a wire with a cord. As for the calendar, peak Asian hornet pressure runs from June to September, which is when it makes most sense to have traps out and checked. Check them regularly: a full trap stops catching.

04 · BEFORE YOU BUY

What is sold is the adapter alone: the attractant and the bottle are separate. And one point that matters especially if you are placing it near the apiary: the trap does not discriminate between what enters — that is decided by the attractant you use and where you hang it. Check the catches from time to time and, if bees start appearing, change the attractant or the location. No trap resolves heavy wasp pressure on its own: it is one more tool within apiary management.