A bee has never aggressively investigated my lunch and refused to fuck off when I’m eating outside.
the ones inspecting human food are one of the few agressive species. take care and maybe set up some traps at the table
3d print a fake hornet nest and put it near or on the table. Scares away wasps
But does it attract hornets?
Also trap the nest with glue
Only if it has curb appeal
Like I’d happily spare some if they’d just get the fuck out of my face
Decoy plate: put a lil food for ‘em a distance away from ya. Blew my mind when I first saw someone do that
I used to own a house with two pear trees. I learned to pick up any fruit that dropped, because the pear juice would ferment under the skin in the warm sun, the wasps would pierce the skin and drink the pear liqueur, and then relentlessly chase me around the yard. It turns out that wasps are belligerent drunks, which shouldn’t be surprising.
Bees on the other hand, are very fun drunks.
I was friends with a hive for years. One year they invited me to a spring bee-kegger. Many were just dancing, but some were so drunk they couldn’t lift-off from the grass because they couldn’t avoid the grass blades long enough to get into the sky.
I started providing a lift-off service so the drunk ones could keep dancing. Some of them were so drunk they just started snuggling my hand and would crawl into the nooks between my fingers and pass out for a while before waking refreshed and hitting the dance swarm again.
When I got home my daughter ran to me and gave me a hug. She jumped back so suddenly I was worried she almost killed a stray bee hiding somewhere and got stung.
“Where have you been?!” She said to me.
“Oh, I’ve been at a bee party all afternoon. They invited me. They were very drunk. It was amazing”
“Oh, that makes sense then. You smell like the essence of flowers, but not in a good way.”This is likely the best thing I will read today.
did you know that sober bees kick drunk bees out of the hive and dont let them in until they habe been sober for a while, and if they get violent/do it often they might be maimed by guard bees?
I did not. Thank you for the tidbit.
Everything seemed to be fine the next day. There were no forlorn bees outside any of the entrances (it was a Huge hive), and there were none hanging out at my house, where the sad boys usually spend a day or two after getting kicked out.
It was hundreds and hundreds of drunken bees. So I think they got a pass.
maybe the whole hive got drunk, including the guards, bees dont really tolerte drunks(and returning sick i think) because they can contaminate the hive and all the stored up honey, rosking a hive collapse, i bet the whole colony had a hangover xD
There’s a portion of my porch with a ramp where they clearly didn’t measure the width of the poles in the side of the ramp guard rail so there’s visible gaps in the top and bottom portions where it meets the actual rail and wasps LOVE to hover on in there and poke around, up to no good. I assume they’re after moisture or other insects but i want them to leave
I don’t know, they’re not all created the same. When I’m in the pool, I let bees land on me, or will fish them out of the water with my hands. Paper wasps look super frightening, but they’re even more docile than honey bees. Yellow jackets on the other hand are complete assholes. We had a nest of them in the yard once and they would go way out of their way to sting people, just for the hell of it. Like not anyone close to the nest or anything, just someone on the patio chilling. I would leave a beehive, but I eradicated the yellow jacket nest.
I don’t know if this is true but I’ve heard yellow jackets get intoxicated on fermenting fruit and become mean drunks.
It’s true, I used to be a yellow jacket
What do you mean? Are you not French anymore?
Yellow jackets on the other hand are complete assholes. We had a nest of them in the yard once and they would go way out of their way to sting people, just for the hell of it.
This was my experience too. I had thought that bees had moved into a bush in my yard. I was happy to have bees there. A week later I was mowing the grass and felt several stabs of pain on my back and wrist. I turn around and see the air is filled with them. I had swatted one in my escape and had a corpse to inspect later and found it was a Yellow jacket wasp. From a distance I could see they were entering and exiting a hole near the bottom of the bush. A quick internet search later I knew that they were nearly dormant at night, and that they need a special oil they produce on the outside of their body to breath. Dawn dish soap apparently strips that away and they die, and its not toxic to the ground or environment.
I put half a bottle of Dawn squirted into their hole at the bottom of the bush at night. I never saw another Yellowjack wasp.
Ugh, sounds awful, but glad you found a solution. I don’t remember what I put down the hole they had at the base of a tree. Wasn’t dawn, I don’t think.
I wasn’t prepared for those stings on my skin to still be hurting some a week later.
Oh, they’re SO painful. Really unnecessarily nasty.
Live by the stinger, die by the stinger
Yep, paper wasps are chill as fuck. I had a hive of them living on my deck under the hand rail. I’d go out and chill with them daily with my coffee during that summer. They would stare at me for a bit. Then get back to eating bits of my deck.
I’m so confused, the paper wasps around here are territorial assholes. Had a nest built on my porch and had to stop using that door. We let them be because we built the house in their woods, but they were definitely not chill at all haha
Edit: Did some learning, the regional species of paper wasps we encounter are known not only for their aggression but also their vastly more painful sting. Wonderful!
Which region if I may ask? Id love to know where never to camp ;)
Ozark Mountains! But you should definitely still camp here, I live in the woods and wouldn’t trade this area for anything!
It looks wonderful on pictures, but I live in Norrbotten, Sweden so its a bit far away for a camping trip
Norbotten is gorgeous! I’ll come camp with you, you come camp with me?!
Its very much summer now
They’re fun to watch because they often grab caterpillars from plants and take them away or eat them nearby. Great for gardens.
This is clearly wasp propaganda because wasps are not cool. They will actually attack you for no reason and then fly away thus indicating they could have always flown away.
Meanwhile bees completely ignore you.
A few months back I was visiting my retired parents, and I wanted to break the routine a bit and decided to sit at a lakeside table we never used because it was redundant.
As I walked up to the table and sat my stuff down, I heard a “FWOMP” followed by a sound I can only describe as “chitinous rubbing”. I slowly checked my surroundings until I noticed an almost basketball sized mass of wasps waking up that had fallen with part of a hive underneath the table. In a moment of extreme calculation I decided the only one of six things on the table worth risking stings for was the tablet, and I sprinted for the first time in years to get away.
So, I guess thanks to the wasps for the fun new core memory.
bro you need to sprint more
Yeah, consider doing it like me: I sprint for the train every day!
I’ve been stung by a bee exactly twice in my life. Both unfortunate accidents where the bee and I collided.
I have long since lost count of how many times I have been stung by wasps just for being near them.
Bees don’t make nests above my door, or under my patio awning. Or generally everywhere outside I need to be. Fuck them wasps.
Bees have never chased me down to sting me. Wasps however…
I used to keep bees. They absolutely do go psycho mode on occasion. They hate, absolutely hate, the smell of banana. Also, when they are in a mission to sting you, they are terrifying. They go for your ears, eyes and mouth, and they do it with precision.
I’ve been chased by bees.
I once cut down a dead tree, not knowing that it contained a bees nest. They chased me until I jumped into a nearby creek. That was not fun.
Well that sounds like fair game. I support humans who kill belligerent wasps, and I support bees who sting belligerent humans
This is wasp propaganda.
this fuck stung the back of my head last week for the sin of taking out the trash.
Was out for a week for work. Got back to my front door and got attacked by a nest that had been made while I was out. I relished nuking them.
I’ve been stung by wasps dozens of times. Never been stung by a bee. I say hello to bumble bees. Wasps get none such niceties from me. Except for tarantula hawks. Those guys are way too fucking big not to doff my hat when in presence.
We should make wasp eating robots.
Agreed! I got stung once for the sin of stopping to look at a cute rabbit on a trail. Little fucker just stung my hand for no reason as I stood there. Fuck those guys. And I love insects!
Last time I was stung by a wasp I was just standing on the street. I wasn’t even moving. I was standing for about 30 minutes waiting when suddenly a wasp came, stung me on the neck and went away flying.
It was a “fuck you in particular” with qll the letters.
That happened to me too. I was standing in line at the bakery and got stung in the neck by a fucking wasp I didn’t even see coming. Fuck those guys.
One of them is chill and just zooms around to pollinate. The other tries to get into every place I don’t want it to be violently and then starts stinging when it inevitably gets stuck. Wasps always try to get into my food, fly somewhere in my clothes where it’ll inevitably get stuck, fly into my face, etc.
I’ve been stung multiple times by both. Bees was always my full idiocy (I was obsessed with insects as a kid). Wasps was never my fault though, those cunts just put themselves in harms way only to “defend themselves” when the inevitable happens
Thing is it’s not actually wasps but just a few very specific kinds of wasps that are assholes ruining the reputation for all.
Something similiar happens for bees. When people talk about them being endangered nowadays they don’t mean the domesticated honey bees many think about (those are cared enough for that populations are rather growing) but the many kinds of wild (and often solitary) bees.
Classic not all wasps apologist.
I feel like wasps seem more interested in both sweaty humans and our food compared to bees, so they get in your face in another way than bees do.
Our southern red brick wall houses a lot of red mason bees every year and even though they live just next to the porch they leave us be. I’ve had a tired bee take a break on my sun-warm shoulder once or twice, but that’s pretty much it.Yeah not all wasps.
But pretty much all the wasps I ever interact with. Idc about some other wild wasps that I never see because they’re chill and stay in the forest or something on their own.
Put themselves in harms way only to get angry about their choices and “forced to defend themselves”… why does that sound so familiar
I’ve never understood their habit of nervously circling around my food for ages like some sort of pendulum of ruined picknicks. Why risk a fight when you could just get your food and fuck off? You’d think aeons of evolution would have corrected that. Sure, who doesn’t like to take a sniff or two before digging in but wasps need to grow the fuck up.
I think we can all agree this fucker deserves some hate, though:
Is that the Japanese hornet that eats whole colonies of bees?
Asian giant hornet, yeah.
Aka the MuRdEr hornet
I cut down a tree yesterday for a few reasons. One was that these bastards were way too interested in it and it’s right next to my house’s door (the other was roots damaging the house as it grew bigger and blocking light in my window). I had one in the house the first year we moved here and that was not a fun experience.
Please tell me you’re not in the PNW. I thought we had eradicated the fuckers on this side of the big pond.
(sorry about the tree though. that sucks.)
I’m in rural Japan.
The nest of meat-eating vulture bees:
I think a sort of crucial point; they eat dead, rotting meat.
They don’t eat anything that lives or fights back.
They look like their stings give you Scarlet Rot.
Mmmm, blood honey, pairs well for breakfast with my blood diamonds.
I’m usually surrounded by paper wasps who don’t really seem to care unless you actively injure them. Have been bumped many times and they contonued on their way.
I’ve heard yellow jackets are usually the type to screw you over because they can.
(Un)fortunately, afaik yellow jackets are actually a pretty effective means of pest control for several crops because they more aggressively collect protein for their larvae.
because they more aggressively collect protein for their larvae.
Sorry, that’s me offering them a small speck of meat so they leave the rest of my plate alone.
Wasp extortion from the wasp mafia, La Vespa Nostra
🪙 have some Lemmy gold
Wow! There’s an emoji for everything.
I got stung by a wasp when I was a kid literally just for sitting in the backseat. I had done nothing at all, and I got stung like three times.
