Yes I posted it elsewhere but here goes the saga;
We had a EU hornets nest above the campfire place and one in a tree on our big island
So we did an experiment
Filled 25 traps with different things (water, nothing, sugar water, cat food, cola, wine, a kefir mixture etc etc)
And the kefir trap drawed the most
Now we have to take into account how wasps live (hornets are just big wasps)
The queens hibernate and start a new nest in spring
The colony goes through different stages
When there are larvae the workers have basically 4 tasks
1 defend the nest
2 scout for food
3 get food
4 maintain nest and take care of larvae
The bigger the colony the more specialized the workers get.
Larvae eat protein from insects so wasps hunt and catch insects.
(This means having a few nests around keeps nuisance insects in check, wasps are our friends here 
)
Like some leave lice the larvae secrete a sweet stuff and that isbwhat the workers eat.
At a later moment in the season no more larvae or much less are in the colony
This is the time wasps starts to annoy people enjoying a meal outside, they want the sugar they don’t get from the larvae anymore.
(Again here they really! are our friends because they will clean up fruit on trees and ground, would they not do this rats and mice would eat that)
Among the latest larvae new queens and male wasps will ensure survival of the species.
So knowing this I did the experiment more to educate my son how experiments work, I was almost certain the hypothesis kefir traps would be the most appealing would be true.
Because, and new info:
Kefir is a SCOBY (Symbiotic Coexistence Of Bacteria and Yeast)
Wether used in milk or water, yeasts consume sugar/lactose producing alcohol and CO2 and bacteria consume alcohol and produce different acids.
We make kefir based on water (basic recipe sugar figs water kefir grains) and lemonade and tgw flavor and color of the lemonade we use determine the flavor of the fizzy drink it becomes.
Treated well the grains grow so I can grow more when needed it just takes a few weeks to get the desired amount.
We have thus an ideal trapping agent, sugar(lemonade), CO2 (lots of insects evolved to find food finding a CO2 source)
Wine makes bees stay away
So yesterday I used
1l of cheap red wine
2 liters of lemonade syrup (1 bottle with apple flavor and scent and almost 2 bottles of red fruit based syrup)
Water
Kefir grains
I cut the top part of a plastic bottle (we save all plastic bottles)
Add a few kefir grains
150-200ml of the sugary wine water mixture
Place the top upside down as a funnel
Drill two holes and use 50cm of iron wire through the holes keeping the funnel into place, and leaving a long strand I use to hang it in trees.
Where there are big trees, dead wood I hang one up and well say 40-50 meters apart.
The cool thing is that Queens wake from hibernation and they are hungry
While looking for a place to start a colony they smell the sugar, alcohol CO2 and want to snack a little, enter via the funnel and when done feeding instinct kicks in so they want to go to the light thus walls of the bottles and die or drown
Leave the traps and the kefir will stay alive for a long time, rain adds water, some leaves falling down provide food for the kefir and the CO2 attracts those nasty flies and mosquito things
At the end of the summer the traps are full of flies and such, smell bad, we don’t drink so much soda doplan on clean and store the bottles for next year.
Small versions of this trap (like 0,5l bottles) placed near fruit traps fruitflies, in bedrooms trap mosquito and place one under the bed to check for bed bugs (we don’t have them)
Very versatile traps and because of the kefir long working
Just the lemonade syrup, wine and water mixture will work for wasps as well (do place one at a spot besides a terras in the direction the wind is blowing to catch wasps from halfway summer) but the kefir just makes it much better and long lasting
When we moved here I had to start kefir again so I ordered 50 gram online for $1 plus postage we have given away So much, use it to fluch down the toilet to keep the septic tank healthy, dump it between plants living acidity like roses and pines
And of course drink it.
