Wasps Nest

Mary must be on holiday!

Going off at a tangent, I was on the net earlier trying to identify a particular variety of ragwort, and was amused to find this "pro" site:

Thanks to political correctness, the DEFRA environmental impact assessment in their Ragwort Control leaflet tells you there are at least 71 types of insect which live on it.....

I thought of Mary Fisher as I was writing that.

Her last post looks to have been 14th December to alt.support.cancer.breast which is perhaps not a promising sign.

There are a few posts from just Mary (different email address) this year which might be same person, but nothing since April.

Once you've solved this problem, it's worth thinking about whether the air-brick is blocked. I had a nest behind one air brick a while ago, treated with foam and though nothing of it. Then the boiler man came for the annual service a few years later and took a look at ventilation etc - It turned out this was the way in for the boiler air (odd system but then it's hot air, not a normal setup) and it was comprehensively sealed, buggering the balance of the boiler. It didn't take me long to fix it (cut the brick out, cleared the nest and mortared a new one in) but it could have been pretty dangerous.

She's posted in the last week to a mailing list I subscribe to.

That's good to know.

Last post this morning, as chirpy as ever.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "newshound" saying something like:

she is in real danger if she gets stung again and makes sure anyone in her company know what to do. Mind you, it makes working out in the fields a bit of a problem, but hey ho.

Quite so. I have a nest of bees about ten feet above head height as I leave my building - can't get rid, no matter how many attempts. I've just got used to them and leave them alone, but the buggers are probably gnawing away at the timbers. If they'd leave me alone it'd be fine, but any time I want to drill the wall or just get up a ladder in their vicinity, they get rather aggressive. That's when I get all on their arse back.

Hmmmm..... there's the meat-eating part of the year when I suppose they help to clear up little corpses. Can't remember any report anywhere, ever, of a place where people were bemoaning the lack of wasps because _____ had got out of control through lack of predation by wasps ( for instance) :-) I should google it some time.

A L P

I've never heard of or observed this here (New Zealand) but they are an introduced species here so may not have the natural niche that they do elsewhere. Likewise with this:

~ snip ~

A L P

A few years ago I was up a ladder re-pointing round a wasp entry hole. The first hour was scary, but then they saw the benefits of using my chisel as a landing stage. By the end of the day we were just ignoring each other and going about our business.

What's in Nippon powder? Is it plain permethrin or (like the liquid) mixed with something sweet to entice the ants into taking it indoors?

Possibly a different species of wasp to the typical wasp that makes a nest in a UK house?

Adam

PS I have seen peacocks eat wasps

I've got some here ...

Nah, it don't taste sweet.

Ah opps, should have looked at

Think I'll live :-)

Surprisingly quick knockdown of Wasps if you can get the powder in the right place.

We have horizontal gutter board and they find their way in to the eaves through gaps between that and the wall boarding.

Homebase do Ant powder in 500g packs but squirting powder uphill does not work. The D-I-Y solution has been a short length of Bundy tube fitted to the opened out hole in the dispenser.

regards

You could be right. Ours are reputed to have come over as stow-aways : Hymenoptera: evolution, biodiversity and biological control - Google Books Result by Andrew D. Austin, Mark Dowton, International ... - 2000

- Science - 468 pages The German wasp arrived in 1945, about 30 years before the common wasp. Both species are now distributed throughout New Zealand in a wide range of habitats ... books.google.co.nz/books?isbn=0643066101...

And there are a couple of pictures here:

Is that why peacocks make that knee-weakening shriek?

A L P

Wasps are only a problem for beekeepers in late summer when their normal food sources are disappearing. Robbing is minimised by reducing the hive entrance size so it's easier for the bees to defend. Strong colonies are barely affected (indeed the beekeeper removes far more honey over the season that wasps could ever do). Weak colonies are robbed just as much by bees from stronger hives, and as the colony is probably weak through varroa-mite infestation it may be no bad thing if it does die out.

It is the *old* queen that goes off with a swarm to found a new colony, leaving behind an unhatched queen cell in the original hive.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "ARWadsworth" saying something like:

Ah's seen a house fly...

In message , Grimly Curmudgeon writes

But have you seen a fly tip ?