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Wasps eating all of my fruit - yet again!

EmerionEmerion Posts: 599
in Problem solving

We’ve got a wasp problem with our fruit again. I managed to harvest some fruit early in the summer, but since they arrived 2 weeks ago the whole crop has been doomed. I daren’t try to pick fruit any more because there are so many of them and I will get stung. I went out in the dark with a torch, thinking they would be in bed, but still got stung by one that was presumably sleeping on a blackcurrant. It isn’t just some of the fruit going, it’s all of it. Every single blackcurrant is now a shrunken little bag. So as we now have a wasps nest somewhere near by, come the autumn, there will, be no apples or autumn raspberries either. Just like last year. 

I saw a suggestion for using boric acid in sugar water to kill them last year, and put some out in good time so that they would hopefully find that before the fruit, but they weren’t interested. Or if any of them were it didn’t work. Maybe boric acid in the UK isn’t really boric acid anymore. Old fashioned chemicals have often been replaced by safer alternatives nowadays. 

I wouldn’t mind if they only took half of the fruit. But they take all of it , and then wander into the house spoiling for a fight, so I’m feeling murderous today. I borrowed OH’s fly swatter, and feel a bit better after squashing 3 of them that wouldn’t leave me alone this morning. 😡 

Does anyone have any ideas, apart from comfort eating?

Carmarthenshire (mild, wet, windy). Loam over shale, very slightly sloping, so free draining. Mildly acidic or neutral.


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  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    edited July 2023
    Someone on here (possibly @Obelixx) once recommended harvesting blackcurrants by cutting the branches and removing the currants with a tablefork. I would think that could be done indoors having first hosed the wasps off the fruit. 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • EmerionEmerion Posts: 599
    Thanks @Dovefromabove . I think I’d be too frightened to hose them off the fruit though! OH was chased down the lane and stung by a bunch of them last year after he accidentally got too close to the entrance of their nest in the ground with a strimmer. He hadn’t actually touched it. Well, maybe I could have tried cutting the branches off in the dark with heavy gloves on. I’ll bear it in mind for next year.  
    Carmarthenshire (mild, wet, windy). Loam over shale, very slightly sloping, so free draining. Mildly acidic or neutral.


  • LynLyn Posts: 23,190
    They’ve had our raspberries this year,  never had so many wasps,  2 nests in the garden. Every raspberry has about 3 or more on them,  fortunately I got plenty before and they’re in the freezer.  They had a go at every one. 
    Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor. 

  • bertrand-mabelbertrand-mabel Posts: 2,697
    So sorry that you lost the harvest. We haven't had a problem with wasps  on blackcurrants thankfully and have been able to harvest a good collection.
    However....recently near Bristol a grower was going to open for raspberry collect your own......the birds got the lot. Gould birds have done the same for you as well as the wasps?
  • EmerionEmerion Posts: 599
    The blackbirds do help with some of the blackcurrants. But half of the blackcurrant bushes and all of the raspberries are in a fruit cage, so no. Also when birds take the fruit, it’s gone completely. When wasps attack black currants, they suck out the juice and leave the empty skin. 
    Carmarthenshire (mild, wet, windy). Loam over shale, very slightly sloping, so free draining. Mildly acidic or neutral.


  • FairygirlFairygirl Posts: 55,117
    Some birds will peck at a fruit and then leave it, so it's easy for wasps to make the most of that.
    Magpies have a go at tomatoes, for example, but rarely take the whole fruit. Wasps won't necessarily eat those, but things like plums or apples are easily pecked and provide that access hole for them to enjoy the sweet fruit they like so much. 
    We always have wasps nesting, but I don't grow much fruit, so I don't really get a problem with them. The slugs always got the strawberries so they wouldn't have much chance with those. They haven't touched the new raspberries, but I eat them as soon as they appear....
    It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....



    I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
  • TopbirdTopbird Posts: 8,355
    edited July 2023
    I grow so-called autumn fruiting raspberries. As per, I started harvesting mid July and the glut will be mid August. Later fruiting varieties seem to be less attractive to birds than earlier ones and this year has been the same - regarding birds.

    I had, however, also noticed that there is a lot of wasp damage. Like @Lyn there are 2 or 3 wasps on each and every ripe raspberry and it really is a race to try to pick them before the wasps get there. Last week I spotted 3 luscious early beauties but left them while I finished cutting the grass. Went back to pick them 30 minutes later and all 3 were half eaten.

    There has always been a bit of wasp damage but nothing like this year. Can't think of any real solution.
    Heaven is ... sitting in the garden with a G&T and a cat while watching the sun go down
  • Allotment BoyAllotment Boy Posts: 6,774
    There is a false nest called a waspinator. Wasps are very territorial and will not nest or forage near another one.  You hang the false nests up in or very near your fruit.  I have seen these at the Barnsdale Gardens, and they say they work well. You need to put them up early in the season. 
    This won't be popular with the conservation folk but you could get a pest controller in to deal with the nests, if the wasps are attacking you or family you have some justification for getting rid of them.
    AB Still learning

  • EmerionEmerion Posts: 599
    That sounds a possibility @Allotment Boy. I will report back in a year. 
    Carmarthenshire (mild, wet, windy). Loam over shale, very slightly sloping, so free draining. Mildly acidic or neutral.


  • EmerionEmerion Posts: 599
    Actually, I think I could sew one of those. They don’t really look like a wasps nest to me,  but then I’m not a wasp. 
    Carmarthenshire (mild, wet, windy). Loam over shale, very slightly sloping, so free draining. Mildly acidic or neutral.


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