In summer wasps are attracted to grapes and appear to affect grape quality, although it is not well known to what extent. At certain times of the year they certainly interfere with the safety of vineyard and winery staff causing a nuisance and posing a health risk. Currently there is no pesticide registered for toxic baiting of European wasps in Australia. Micro-encapsulated diazinon has been occasionally approved for use in baits by individual pest controllers. Control of wasps using toxic baits lends itself to situations where it is not practical or cost effective to seek and destroy wasp nests.
Poison bait is taken back to the colony and fed to the larvae.
The death of the workers and larvae disrupts the functioning of the nest and may cause it to collapse. Successful baiting of the nest has the potential to reduce or completely eliminate the ability of the colony to produce fit queens to disperse for the next season. The preliminary laboratory trials indicated that this insecticide was toxic to wasps at low concentrations. Given that this active ingredient has low mammalian toxicity, this presents the opportunity to produce a low risk toxic bait. Further, there are few ant species in NZ compared with the high diversity in Australia.