It's not uncommon. There are different kinds of social wasps, one type always builds nests in a bush or tree.
It's only more normal for another type of wasp.
You can't guarantee that. They respond to vibrations.
That's a silly and potentially dangerous solution. But don't let me stop you ...
No, and they won't be 'going spare'. They'll be dying, horribly. It's not fun.
Or perhpas you enjoy watching creatures dying at your hands?
WHAT??? What fruit crops? And in what way?
I really don't think you know much about wasps. And I'm sad that you're so hostile to a beautiful, intelligent and extremely useful creature. That is, useful to Man, unlike badgers which can spread disease.
Don't know about the wasps but please don't denigrate the badger which does a lot of good for the countryside. The only disease it spreads is bovine TB which only affects cattle. They pass it on by walking in the cow's feeding trays which means you must keep badgers out of the cowshed come what may. But as badgers are very territorial, if your area hasn't got TB and nobody kills the local badgers so that others will move in, there isn't usually a problem. Unfortunately too many idiots don't understand this and kill badgers indescriminantly and even more unfortunately HM Gov are included in this list of idiots. The only way this would work (apart from complete extermination of the species) would be for a selective cull of infected badgers but how you do that I don't know.
Which is exactly the reason that we have told no one about the ones that we have, not even the local badger groups are aware of them. Hopefully that way they should have a relatively peaceful life.
But ONLY cattle? Thousands of cattle are killed every year in UK, not because they HAVE TB but because they MIGHT have it. Badgers are protected even when they're known to have it.
What about cattle which live outside?
HMG isn't culling badgers.
No. But exactly the same arguments can be made about wasps. OK, a wasp stings you. If you think it will do any good kill that wasp - you don't need to destroy the whole colony.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall reading about someone having died as a result of a badger biting their ankle.
But I have heard about people dying because of a wasp sting (or was that a bee sting? Perhaps it's related to whether they swarm....).
So doing away with a colony might not be such a bad thing IF the wasps are in an area where there is a good chance of them stinging people.
Andrew
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All that means is that you haven't read about it. That doesn't mean that it hasn't happened.
Swarming bees are extremely unlikely to sting, they have nothing to defend and it's very difficult for them to get into the stinging position. Beekeepers enjoy demonstrating this by running bare hands through a swarm. It's a lovely feeling, warm, soft and responsive.You must have seen pictures of people with 'bee beards'?
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are two young men and two young women by the way, with no protective clothing.
There are about 8 deaths a year in UK from the combined stings of bees, wasps, snakes and whatever else they might be stung by. Most deaths are caused by extreme reactions to stings.Very, very few people are so sensitive. I'm one of them as it happens, I'm not dead yet and I've probable come into contact with more wasps and bees than the rest of this group together. But I'm intelligent, I take precautions, not risks, and know how to treat myself if I'm stung at a vulnerable time. Even those of us with extreme vulnerability don't die with every sting :-)
I don't have pictures but I've walked around with a wasp trying to eat the hard skin round my thumb. I have pictures of a wasp eating my lunch at Berkeley Castle last year.
That's the first time that's been suggested. I've been known to destroy colonies of wasps (albeit with a heavy heart) when they've been sited in places where there's a lot of human traffic. But even in those conditions they usually aren't a problem and if you killed all the colonies you could find there still would be millions of biting and stinging insects flying around in summer. The effect of your efforts would be almost nil.
Nobody's mentioned mosquitoes - I react very badly to those. and don't talk about horseflies and even greenfly ...
The most dangerous thing I do when seeing to swarms or wasp nests is getting in the car ...
I'm British - we only have two species, almost indistinguishable. And hornets if you're lucky enough to live in an area that has them.
I've done it scores of times, though I'm not heavy-footed.
I've done it several times with wasps' nests. As for jumping off ladders, isn't it the normal way down?
They die quite slowly, and not immediately.
They eat a small part of *every* fruit, and then it rots. Like rodents, they spoil far more than they eat.
I'm familiar with wasps, as they don't mind having me around. Wasps are pretty (except those continental ones that we had for a couple of years in the eighties, which lacked style. They did nest in trees, which is why they died out in our climate.) They have minimal intelligence (slightly more than earthworms, but social insects have very little autonomy). The amount of carrion they clean up is insignificant, in fact it's a curiosity to see several of them among the flies on a dead pigeon. I don't know what else they'd be useful for.
So why is there the fuss about bovine TB? Why are cattle killed when they're reactors even if they don't HAVE TB?
You haven't addressed my previous point nor this oneproperly. You're cherry picking, thus devaluing your argument.
There are several breeds of cows which can and do live outside perfectly well, we have a daughterwith such a herd. But she still had a reactor...
Where?
I don't want to have anything to do with badgers. If they appeared in my garden they'd have accidents. They are dirty by human standards - like all 'vermin' - and can be vicious.
I used to eat badger meat but no longer. Even it's skin isn't much good for anything.
We have three COMMON species of social wasps in England (I live in Yorkshire). I'm not counting hornets, we rarely have them as far north as this, sadly.
But you said that they *won't* react. You can't guarantee that.
I haven't made a study of it and I doubt that you have.
What you call, unscientifically,going spare is writhing from the effects of the poison on their nervous system.
No they don't.
Not necessarily.
They don't EAT fruit.
So why kill the colony? We usually have several wasp nests in our house and in our garden every year. We never kill them, we watch them. and I've studied them, academically.
Oh what a silly thing to say!
I really don't know why I'm bothering to read this, in fact when I get to the end that will be the finish.
It's not but I don't know why you brought that in. They do take far more live meat from what most people consider to be pests.
That just proves that you don't know much about wasps.What's worse, you're not willing to learn.
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