Salt Can Kill Wasps, But There's A Specific Way To Do It

On the tier list of the world's most-loved insects, wasps will absolutely never reach the top. Honey bees, ladybugs, and other winged crawlies have been pardoned and classified as insects that you should never kill, but most wasps are not granted the same clemency, even though they do help with keeping spider and fly populations down. While there are some harmless wasps you shouldn't kill, the consensus is that they have to go, but what's the best way to kill wasps? It turns out that a common ingredient from your kitchen can do the trick, but you'll need a way to weaponize it. That's where the Bug A-Salt SHRED-ER comes in.

While the standard Bug A-Salt Gun makes light work of flies and other small insects, wasps have hard exoskeletons that act as armor against predators and fast table condiments. The Bug A-Salt SHRED-ER is a CO2 powered pistol that, according to the specs, is 10x more powerful than the Bug-A-Salt 3.0. The tool uses salt cartridges to supposedly "annihilate hard and soft bodied insects including giant roaches, yellow jackets, wasps, murder hornets, lantern flies, Carpenter Bees, and scorpions." But does it work?

Testing the SHRED-ER on a hornet that found its way under the hood of a vehicle, Aledo Arms and Ammo on YouTube show the damage that the salt rounds can inflict from a foot and a half away. A second shot completely separates the insect's abdomen from its thorax. The effectiveness of the salt gun is thanks in large part to the 12-gram CO2 cartridge inside. Similar cartridges are used inside airguns, seltzer makers, and some bicycle tire inflators. When the trigger is pulled on the gun, pressurized carbon dioxide propels the salt down the barrel at a high velocity, hitting the target with a concentrated spray of hard crystals. 

The Bug A-Salt SHRED-ER starter kit comes with the gun, 120 rounds of salt ammunition, and five CO2 canisters. The ammo cartridges are not designed to be reused and the company advises against modifications for safety reasons, however some crafty owners like YouTuber JustAnotherAvgJoe have shared their methods for making low-cost refills with salt and water.

Bug A-Salt as a company does not condone or encourage indiscriminate killing of all insects. In the safety policy on the Bug A-Salt website, there is a section about what product owners should and should not target. While "flies and other harmless insects" are fair game, rodents, pets, reptiles, mammals, and "beneficial insects such as butterflies and other pollinating insects" are not. The Bug A-Salt SHRED-ER is non-toxic and has virtually no impact on the environment or on your pets (unless they're pet slugs). Each shot is more or less like a pinch of table salt being thrown over your shoulder, so any accidental consumption by animals is not a concern. What may be a concern for some is the ethics of killing insects with a salt gun.

Like them or not, wasps are in fact living creatures, which opens up much larger philosophical discussions about consciousness, animal rights, and our responsibilities towards nature. The Bug A-Salt would not be considered a humane method for pest removable, but there are products like the Felyne Debugger and Insect Vacuum and other no-kill alternatives on the market. There are also steps you can take to keep insects out of your house. What's more, there are even beneficial bugs that will banish pests from your garden for you.