Posted on 09/07/2013 11:00:32 PM PDT by BenLurkin
"Drunk and jobless" wasps could be on their way to a barbecue near you and be warned - they're bold and ready to attack you.
(Excerpt) Read more at mirror.co.uk ...
They must be Trayvon wasps.
The picture shows Yellowjackets, commonly referred to as “bees” where I live, nuch to my chagrin. “Wasps” may be an improvement, but they are technically hornets.
When you see them around a trash can, or even at your picnic table, and in your soda cup, they are no threat if you ignore them. Their stings are reserved for defense of the nest, as I have discovered on several occasions.
That happens here in the spring. Sap runs out of red oaks near the base of the tree and if there are any knotholes or nooks and crannies for that sap to pool up in, it ferments. Distinctive smell, sort of sour. Fresh cut red oak for firewood can have a similar scent until seasoned. But, the bugs love the stuff and get pretty buzzed. Wasps, Yellow Jackets and a variety of hornets are a hazard when they’ve gotten into it.
I had a white faced hornet fly up from the base of a red oak and straight into my forehead at full speed once, it hit so hard I thought it was a BB or a piece of gravel flung out of a mower. It stung me in the process. Hornet stings pack considerably more punch than a wasp or Yellow Jacket, it raised quite a welt. Drunk hornet. The impact stunned or injured it, it fell to the ground at my feet. I stepped on it and killed it once I realized what had happened.
A kamikaze!
Yellow Jackets are akin to wasps in behavior, but nest underground. They're very ornery if the weather has been wet.
Wasps here are “paper wasps” that built open-faced nests in very inconvenient places around human habitation, so if you're outside working in the yard, painting or cleaning the house, trimming bushes or the like, it pays to check for nests. I broke my arm once, tripping over a mower and falling backwards because wasps that I had disturbed swarmed me.
Hornets, we have two varieties, both mean and not to be trifled with. The smaller white faced hornet builds the big paper nest that is the stereotypical hornets nest, in trees, bushes, sometime gables of houses. Japanese Hornets are huge, colored and striped like a tiger and really make an impression, they attack wasp nests and eat them.
Pretty much, lol.
It felt a bit like a religious experience! ;)
Carpenter Bees!
That must have been what I ran into at a large research facility. It was a ground nest, and these big black and white “bumble bees” chased me for quite a ways.
I told my contact, and pretty soon the insect guy came over. I told him it was really odd that these “bumble bees” chased me. He laughed, and said they don’t chase people, but he would go take a look. I showed him where I had put some flagging on the ground near it.
I was 300 feet away doing my work, but watching him approach the nest. It was pretty funny to see him start booking it away from the nest, waving his hat in his hand! I had a good chuckle at that. He got geared up and took care of the nest.
He came back to me and apologized for laughing at me. “Yeah, and I used TWO cans of spray on those suckers. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
The females can bite and sting. They earn their name by boring holes in exposed wood, perfectly round, about a half inch across. You can hear them boring those holes. They’ll riddle a deck or trellis in a few years time if you don’t get rid of them.
"But if we could communicate with the mosquito, we would find that he contains within himself the flying center of the world." - FN
I have always taken that to heart.
Most animals with thick fur can get away with messing with nests, because the stingers can’t get through the fur. Bears and badgers come to mind, and I guess skunks qualify too.
I spotted one drilling into the underside of my folks’ porch down in AZ. Just like you said, perfectly round little holes, looked like they were machine drilled into the wood. I first noticed them when I was out having a cigarette and noticed these funny piles of sawdust on the ground. Looked up, and there they were.
My parents don’t smoke anymore, and hardly go out to that downstairs patio, so if I hadn’t been there, the suckers probably would have carved up the whole brand new cedar deck before they noticed :)
Took six cans of Spectracide to dig them out of my barn and garage, one nest at a time. Most of the local stores ran out of wasp and hornet spray last month. Bad year.
Cicada wasp.
Bad news!
I like bumblebees, they’re hard workers, only hang around flowers, mind their own business and they don’t annoy anyone......
Kind of like bears & bee stings. I bought this house a couple of years ago. Previous owner had dumped several inches of gravel over back part of yard. Over years weeds took hold, and the wasp infestations were bad; they thrived being able to hide in them.
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