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This might be just a farce as I’m not sure of the potential of dogs doing this nor the feasibility/popularity of this idea.
I have problems with aphids on my swan plants and today I took up spraying the plants with garlic-laden water to try stop the aphids returning after doing my best to squash them all. While doing that some of the numerous paper wasps from nearby hidden nests flew in to scan my plants for baby caterpillars and in my anger I got satisfaction in spraying some wasps and stamping on them when they lay saturated on the ground, but no – that’s not the idea I had.
The best way to get rid of wasps is to hit them where it hurts which is at their nest, but the problem I have is trying to find the damned things even having attempted numerous times to chase wasps I’ve doused in flour near dusk. The garlic-laden water has a quality of having a very distinctive smell to it and the idea I had was to saturate wasps in garlic water and allowing them to fly away. Then maybe a tracker dog could track the free wasps back to a nearby nest and a human could destroy the nest. Keeping in mind the danger of the dog being stung it would have to be kept on a lead while the trainer kept a close look-out for any wasp activity to prevent the dog getting too near.
I know dogs are good at tracking such things kiwis in the wild and drugs in airports, so could this idea be feasible or is there a flaw in it? I know that garlic is a very common smell around homes, but maybe an alternative type of smell could be used in the water? I read lately about some new wasp poison being tested in Nelson that has one flaw which is that the nest is not destroyed and the following season an emptied nest can be found and repopulated by new wasps, but that might have a more unique smell and the dog would then could also be tracking dead wasps lowering the danger to it.
Also does the garlic-water versus aphids idea work or is it just a wives tale?
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