Only the queen lays eggs and she had her honeymoon in the spring, never to be repeated.
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8 years ago
Pest control came and dealt with wasp nest in garden, what about stragglers?
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8 years ago
Well you know what Hercule Poirot nearly said: "In the summer, the outdoors, it should be closed!".
I stopped my lawnmower over the entrance to a wasps' nest once, and carried on about 10 mins later. They ignored me throughout the process, including when I ReadyMixed their nest entrance.
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8 years ago
I'm afraid you are wrong, Chris.
Do Wasps Pollinate Flowers?
Quite simply, YES!
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8 years ago
2 years ago we had an underground wasp nest about 4ft from our front door. The wasps were only interested in going in and out of their nest.
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8 years ago
We have just been in Corsica. Several of the hotels we stayed at had outside dining tables for breakfast and in two cases dinner.
The hotels had something to put on the tables that burnt to distract the wasps which always came.
I found that given a choice, the wasps preferred ham or bacon to jam, so I put a sample on the table as far from us as practical.
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8 years ago
It is a bit late in the season to bother killing wasps nests and only really necessary if you want to install/replace a fence post or dig exactly where they have chosen to build their nest. Happened to me once. Spade in followed by loads of angry buzzing and run like hell.
Had to get a bloke in to zap it. Apparently the wasp grubs are very much favoured by anglers.
Waste of money - they will be all dead in a months time anyway and it is already too cold now to sit out. Live and let live. They will only sting you if you try to squash them or attack their nest.
There will be live grubs in the nest for ages but any that come into direct contact with the insecticide will expire pretty quickly.
Leave well alone for several days until the poison has had time to act.
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8 years ago
Not this year. But in the past have had them in various sheds etc. Leave them alone and they will leave you alone. The nests are very intricately made from reconstituted wood fibre making a paper structure.
I draw the line at having them in the house or cavity wall but in the garden they eat caterpillars and pollinate plants.
I have once put a spade through an unknown wasps nest up against a rotting fence post. Only thing I could do was run like hell and get indoors. I didn't actually get stung but the spade stayed put.
Pest control did see it off with the white powder. Back then DDT?
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8 years ago
Hmm. Possibly a chance observation, or possibly wasps do visit flowers to get the pollen. What they don't do is visit flowers for their nectar: that is what bees do.
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8 years ago
I wouldn't know about that, but what I do know is that they definitely visit our flowers a lot.
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8 years ago
Oooooooooh I thay ...
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8 years ago
Hah! You glibly say "not a problem", but I reckon these f*ckers are going to hang around all winter, just to be a damn nuisance.
MM
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8 years ago
Trouble is, we get a lot of breezes off the North Sea, but not much frost.
MM
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8 years ago
Indeed.
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8 years ago
They probably visit flowers just in case there's something in there that they can sting.
MM
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8 years ago
He's coming tomorrow again and will blast them again.
MM
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8 years ago
I have never been stung by a hornet or wasp and I live in a country with probably many more stinging biting annoying things than you have,now if you were talking about mosquitoes it would be a different matter. I have been stung by bees a couple of times and if I had been the bee I would have stung me. one I rode into at 40 MPH on a scooter and another I trod on . I have stood still many times when a mud hornet has hovered 6 inches in front of my face with its mud ball in hand seeing if I was a threat.
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8 years ago
Do the gardening in a couple of weeks when they are not a problem.Problem solved.
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8 years ago
Food? ;)
Maybe I could entice my wasps away like the Pied Piper but with a slice of ham on a stick. What kind of ham, do you think? I've got German baked ham in the fridge, all the way from Bavaria. But they might turn up their proboscises at that "foreign muck".
My mum used to set a jam jar half-full of water on the windowsill with some jam smeared around the top. That caught a lot of wasps.
Actually, that just gave me an idea! I have plenty of jam jars and some jam.... hmmm.... Oh no! The jam is made in Belgium!
MM
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8 years ago
Well, the bloke is returning tomorrow anyway, but do you think it takes days for the stuff to work? He reckoned yesterday that they'd be gone by today. And I really thought they had -- until I started cutting back the mass of greenery that has grown up while they've been there.
MM
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8 years ago
Wrong answer. Why should we have to alter our plans to fit in with wasps? At present it is nice weather for gardening. By the time the wasps have gone it may be rainy/cold/windy.
I agree with the OP. If the wasps were doing no harm, then they should be allowed to stay. But if they are close to a house and are threatening anyone who goes outside, whether or not they actually sting (and they did sting the OP) then they must go - or else be urged to "buzz off" somewhere else.
Be grateful that you are not allergic (like my wife) to wasp stings - she suffered a severe anaphylactic shock after one stung her a few years ago and had to be rushed to hospital because her airway swelled up. Since then, I have to do any gardening near to wasps because she's not prepared to take the risk again. We are always glad when the weather turns cold and kills off wasps.