Small correction
Worker wasps are infertile females, not males. And the sting is evolved from an egg-depositor.
Britain's booze hooligans are back – and more obnoxious than possibly imagined. Yes, we're talking about wasps, which have been behind a wave of complaints in the UK by turning up uninvited at beer gardens, drinking leftovers from people's pint, getting drunk, and then picking a fight with the locals. The weather is to blame …
contribute *nothing* other than eating insects which has all the bird lovers up in arms.
As a pestie, this year I have dealt with quite a few but the worst time is apple fall time, THATS when they get nasty as the nests are nearing their end, the queen dies, the new queens leave and the workers are suddenly left with no young to tend to. So they have to go it alone. Feasting on fermenting fruit. Getting pissed and aggressive.
At the moment they are pretty docile but come September. especially if it is warm...
PS, Top Tip.
Use ant powder to kill wasps nests. Not fucking petrol!
If you can see where they are going in, puff some powder in there at night, repeat 24/48 hours later. Leave 3 days. repeat if necessary. If in the loft, use RED light as they cant see it.
Wear eye protection at least. A sting in the eye is extremely dangerous!
WARNING: I have a radio face anyway but this is a sting I took last year, this was 16 hours after the event.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AoEv-9vBdzh_hMhORAkRwQp8fi5BvA
Yeah, we have similar problems at home, our two apple trees at the back of the garden started falling earlier than usual this year (around about 3/4 weeks ago), so the stripy bastards have been stalking around, getting rowdy with the locals, i.e. us. We spent some time picking up all of the apple fall and sticking it into a big plastic tub and left it on the other side of the garden, so they're all congregating there at the moment. Also pulled a few kilos of apples of the tree itself (they were big, juicy and red - very tasty), so we shouldn't be getting too much rotting fruit for a couple of weeks now.
We haven't found any nests nearby, so not sure where they are coming from, but if I do I'll definitely keep your advice in mind.
Fun story aside, a couple of years ago we came downstairs one morning to find a couple of dozen of the little bastards in our living room, mostly sitting around on the window glass, with no idea how they got there. So we opened the windows and managed to shoo most of them out. Shut the windows, went back an hour later, more wasps! Pulled one of the side units away from the wall and we spotted them climbing out of the air holes that were located in front of the bricked up fireplace. Turns out, they had established a nest in part of the old brickwork of the chimney stack, and when it came time for them to start moving out of the nest, they followed the airflow of the chimney stack straight through into the living room. I had to quickly block up all the air holes to stop the flow. Called out a guy and he found the entrance way they were using to get in, under the eaves of the roof. A few squirts with his telescopic thingy (ooh err!), and two days later all gone. He also mentioned about the red light thing as well.
Had this in the female loo at work, all the other men in the company being too pussy to deal with the situation I went in with a Henry hoover like some sort of Ghostbuster and thunked them down the nozzle (top tip!) after which I duct-taped their entry holes.
Left a note on the hoover and the nest to die off over winter, total pest control bill £0.00
Until a couple of days ago I had a football-sized wasps' nest outside the house, however the wasps haven't been a problem and they seemed to be doing a good job of removing aphids. I was wondering about how to remove the nest but a family of sparrows tore it to shreds and the wasps have all but vanished.
I take a bit more care of drinking outdoors ever since a few years ago I took a swig from a can that contained a wasp; it stung the back of my tongue, but fortunately I don't have a bad reaction so it was just a painful surprise rather than anything more serious.
"this is a sting I took last year"
Ouch! =:o
The last time I remember being stung was when I was a teenager. Some friends and I inadvertently disturbed a nest - and when we realised, ran like hell. Quite some distance later, I said I can still hear one of the buggers. Then I felt a sting in the back of my head - and a few seconds later another, then another...
One of my friends spotted it, trapped in my hair - and it was stinging me repeatedly in the same spot because that's all it could do.
My friend then splatted it. Problem solved.
That multiple sting aside, we were very lucky, really - AIUI they're more likely to be able to spot you if you move. And also, when one stings you a pheromone is included as a bonus extra that marks you as a target for its angry pals.
Yeah, they hurt. Oddly, being stung is part and parcel for me but that one was in my upper eyelid.
Ordinarily, they itch and swell a bit. God knows what that little bastard pumped into me.
Only fair I suppose, I had just sprayed the nest with Ficam-D (THE wasp killer of choice for professionals).
In 13 years of dealing with the stripy little buggers I have been stung 11 times.
Killed hundreds of thousands of em though, potentially millions..
Suits me!!
When I was about 10 I trod on a underground wasps nest. I remember the ground sinking a bit then was enveloped by a cloud of wasps. I did the world record sprint probably being followed by a comic strip style --> arrow of wasps. I was pulling handfuls of wasps out of my clothing. Must have had hundreds of stings.
Clearly I am not allergic but it was not a fun day.
Wasps are a vital part of our ecosystem:See here for details
That may be so, but gardeners conducting warfare against wasps isn't going to alter the natural balance since gardens aren't any form of balanced natural habitat in the first place.
Rats perform certain beneficial activities in the eco-system, particularly if there's a balance with predators, but I'm in no hurry to accommodate a colony of rats.
So you totally missed the part about wasps being general pollinators? I often see wasps alongside the bees on the flowers in our garden, flying in and out to collect nectar and in the process pollinating the plants. Given the reduction in bee numbers we ought to think twice about reducing the numbers of other pollinating insects, aggravating or not.
No, I didn't miss it. Did you miss the part where I said the two common pest wasp species don't pollinate plants to any great degree. Its only through function of them hunting insects that they pollinate. It is not a preconditioned behaviour and without them not much would change.
Use ant powder to kill wasps nests.
the Rentokil wasp's nest destroyer that you can buy from large supermarkets is another good option. If you can see the nest a single generous helping will do the trick, if you can't see it (like the one behind our soffit box) then three applications were needed through the entry point the wasps were using. Unlike ant powder this stuff is a liquid that comes out through a jet nozzle for a range of several feet, and then expands vigorously as a foam that dissipates over an hour or so. Easy to apply safely and quickly followed by the tried and tested approach of running away.
I did notice when taking the nippers to various theme parks that despite the combination of people, junk food, sugary drinks, and extensive woodland, the bigger and more professionally run venues made very effective use of wasp traps to minimise and all but eliminate the nuisance. Whereas some of the smaller theme parks and entertainment sites haven't cottoned on, and are infested with the things. Unfortunately a decent sized wasp trap is large and ugly (particularly when full of dead wasps, so unless you can hide three or so of these around your garden they won't be much use. The small wasp traps sold for domestic use I've found to be absolutely useless.
Use ant powder to kill wasps nests.
Karcher. Highly effective and less risky than a weed-burner when close to buildings. Karcher removes all kinds of pests that have made the mistake of trying to co-habit with humans.
When in a beer garden one option is to bait them away from you with a cider soaked beermat.
Or wait for them to crawl inside an empty glass, place a beer mat over the top and be amused at the thing trying to escape (for a short time before releasing the thing at a safe distance from your table).
"Use ant powder to kill wasps nests. Not fucking petrol!"
If you do insist on using petrol, don't be so stupid as to light it, It's the fumes that do them in (confession: we used it in the 1970s for in-ground major infestations around a rural school as it worked in less than 24 hours, kids were at-risk and the things seemed to be immune to everything else. No, we didn't light it - it was a different part of the world and a different approach to H&S. I don't think you'd get away with jamming 750ml glass beer bottles full of petrol into wasp next entrances in the dead of night and running like hell anymore.)
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Yeah, wasps are hornets with small intense arsehole syndrome.
We had asiatic hornets from a large nest (1m ball) up one of our tall tree's removed by the pompiers that they took away for research a couple of years back, and yeah its a bit intimidating having things the size of small birds mooching around making this giant buzz but generally they're benign. This year no hornets, but plenty of wasps nesting in stupid annoying (to humans) places like inside the car mirror assemblies etc.
Kind of wish the hornets would come back and eat all the little jasper arseholes.
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The Beeb did a series back in the 90's called Weird Nature. Cracking little show and one episode was all about animals getting ripped to the tits on various psychoactive substances.
It included bees getting sloshed on pilfered pints and then showed the drunk bastards bouncing off their own hive when they flew home. The club bouncers at the entrance to the hive would refuse entry to any bee who was too hammered to do the dance properly.
Same episode featured drunk monkeys nicking pitchers of grog, hedgehogs huffing creosote and a jaguar stoned out of its gourd after eating something herbal.
In Canada and Siberia, bears and moose are known to get drunk on berries, not sure if they eat them fermented or they ferment inside the animal.
I think I would prefer to deal with a couple or few p8ssed wasps than a bear or a moose.
Many decades back some mates and I stuffed the blackpowder from several penny bangers into a cardboard tube, inserted it into a wasp nest, lit the blue touch paper and retired, not far enough though. The wasps were quite annoyed at what we did to their nest, I was one of the fastesy runners and had half a dozen stings, a couple of the other lads had more. After that we were a little more responsible in our selection of demolition targets.
Goes for some of the islands too.
Coming from Orkney, I am quite familiar with very windswept trees as you describe. However, we have "normal trees" in sheltered places try googling "happy valley Orkney" and looking at the pictures. No apple trees there as far as I know though.
Cut the (bruised) top off an apple once and a fully-grown wasp staggered out from the core. He must have crawled in as a wee wasplet and couldn’t back out. Or was having a doze to sleep it off. Had no choice - after all wasps look and sound so ANGRY and the way they fly at you is so THREATENING - but to squash the b*****d.
Just imagine getting stuck inside a reasonably full barrel of cider and not even being able to drink your way out.
Got stung on the wrist myself at a beer festival a fortnight ago. I played nicely all weekend (no swatting!) but got stung anyway. I’d include the picture if I could, but El Reg’s below-the-line stuff doesn’t support that.
Wasp sting treatment? Insect bite creams like Anthisan are good. Or failing that, topical application of something mildly acidic like lemon juice. Or application of ice. You can imagine I had lots of trouble finding ice and lemon at a beer festival at a pub.
Unless you have a serious reaciton to insect stings just man up and shout, "Ow, shit! You little f**ker!" as the smug stripey bastard flies away to bother someone else. Once got stung on the Adam's Apple while standing outside HMV ( that dates it! ) and it felt someone had driven a sewing needle into my throat. Saw the smug little git fly away while I grabbed at my throat, it didn't hurt for long and stopped hurting after 5 mins.
I have *never* been stung by a wasp or a bee.
I put it down to my calm nature when they approach... I simply put a had over my beverage and use gentle wafting motions to move them away.
I do so enjoy the comedy moments when people run around, screaming while waving their arms about.
I have also observed that if you kill a wasp in a very few minutes another of the stripey bastards will turn up and unerringly approach it's fallen comrades body before checking out the group to see who it thinks is to blame!
*Allow me to assure you that the smug look on your face will rapidly disappear when you are stung and if you happen to be allergic then the panic that follows when you realise you are entering anaphylactic shock will also wipe that grin off your chevvy chase.
*not that I wish it to happen to you but it can, does and has happened.
In fact, I used to pour some of my drink onto the table for them at the various beer gardens down in Oxfnord that I used to haunt, primarily as it kept them from trying to go for a swim in my pint.
As well as the usual ciders, I can say they seemed to really quite like 6X, tolerated Old Peculier, weren't that found of the Guinness (considering the number of times I had a bad pint of the stuff there, who could blame them?)..the surprise to me was that they also seemed to have quite a taste for whisky, though at the prices charged for single malts (excluding the JCRs and the Union) the stripey lushes could go mooch a sip elsewhere.
Having done a study a couple or weeks ago when I was camping with friends in the West Riding of Yorkshire, we discovered that Irn-Bru was no use. The effective solution, albeit coupled with a wasp trap was diluted HP Fruity Sauce. Vespula Germanicae in other parts of the UK may have different tastes.
Sir David Attenborough was walking past a second-hand vinyl shop and saw an album in the window - "Wasp sounds of the Amazon".
He asked the shop assistant if he could have a listen. The LP was duly placed on the turntable and a set of headphones passed to him.
After a few minutes, he threw the headphones down in disgust. "I'm Sir David Attenborough! I've spent months in the Amazon! We did a special on the wasps and I don't recognise ANY of this! What's up?"
The assistant turned around and apologised. "Sorry sir, I was playing the Bee side..."
See https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2332214.The_Furies
M'man Keith Roberts thought BIG. He had wasps big enough to carry off humans, and pitched battles involving armoured vehicles and aircraft vs wasps with bad attitudes. I liked it, if only for the battles between wasps and Saracen APCs (the Saracens didn't always win...) though to be sure I was about nine when I first read it, so the idea of a wasp big enough to bite through a machine gun barrel was more exciting than terrifying...
>> As with any drunk, it's a good idea not to annoy them more than they already are: so walking away rather than swatting at them is a better policy than picking a fight. Or in the classic lingo of the drunken beer-garden confrontation: leave 'im, he ain't worth it.
Wasps, eh? Bastards.
Sorry I have a kill on sight policy with these bastards. Bees, no problem, flies, not keen but I'll leave them alone if they leave me alone. Wasps, must die
In their defence:
-they have an unusual fast side to side search flying pattern
-difficult for us to fathom and likely to seem aggressive.
However, if you hold your hand near as they waver about you'll see they don't attack you, they're just inquiring and searching.
Give them a chance to have a look, stay calm, carefully relocate any landers and you'll have no problems.
We can all get along together.
Yes, they're also part of a wider balanced ecosystem. They don't need to be cast as the devil or scapegoated.
It's time to reconsider our well rehearsed prejudices which all to often bring about the bad results we didn't want in the first place
In their defence:
-they have an unusual fast side to side search flying pattern
-difficult for us to fathom and likely to seem aggressive.
However, if you hold your hand near as they waver about you'll see they don't attack you, they're just inquiring and searching.
Give them a chance to have a look, stay calm, carefully relocate any landers and then sting you anyway.
TFTFY
A few years ago, I saw wasps flying into and out of some planking at the top of an old coalshed. There were non inside but I was sure I could here rustlung up in the roof.
I blocked the knot hole with "plastic wood" which some of you may remember from woodwork lessons in school. A few days later they were comming out of a different hole so I blocked that one and then went round and blocked up others. No more wasps around.
A couple of years later, we were getting some work done and they were going to replace the roof. I told the people doing it. When they got the roof off, I had a look. It was larger than my head and apparently full of dead things that could still sting you.
Anyone who remembers Thick Ethernet will no doubt remember the pain and agony of bee stings, which could only be inserted at a minimum of 2.5 metre intervals to tap the network signal (cables were marked with the minimum insertion points). Our biggest client at the time had a server room with three or four servers in it... and a bloody great coil of thick ethernet cable to go with them. (Thick Ethernet cable was a lot less flexible than parallel printer cables, and about as thick).
I was sitting at a bus stop with a new colleague and client recently. We'd just had a lovely Sunday Carvery lunch. My colleague suddenly swatted his arm at a wasp, saying that it had stung him. I was dubious and thought that he might have actually "pushed" the sting into himself.
He then told me that he had to be very careful about these things as he has previously suffered anaphylactic shock. Not only that, he told me he carries an EpiPen, normally. Today he'd left it at work, as usual. Having just done a first aid course, my first thought, which I said aloud, was, "What's first aid for anaphylaxis?
We both said aloud at the same time, 999!!
I kept a very close eye on him and had my phone in my hand. We were just five miles from the nearest A&E but thankfully he just had a small red blemish and had no other adverse reaction.
Wasps? I've always hated the buggers. I delight in swatting them by hand and hearing that satisfying thud as they hit the deck. Followed swiftly by the crunch of them underfoot.
Any by the way, he wasn't just winding me up!