4 ms·

I have a fair amount of wasps in my vicinity: mud daubers and paper wasps mostly it seems. They're very inquisitive and curious but not necessarily belligere

I have a fair amount of wasps in my vicinity: mud daubers and paper wasps mostly it seems. They're very inquisitive and curious but not necessarily belligerent. I've never had any problems with them so I generally leave them alone, though I do clean their nests off my house and shed. *One of the coolest experiences of my life spent outside was watching a tarantula hawk and tarantula engage in mortal combat right in front of my friend and I as we were sitting and relaxing in a park.

davidw 7y ago
The worst ones seem to be hornets/yellow jackets. They're aggressive, and want to eat anything that people have.
- lostlogin 7y ago
  Vespex. It’s a fantastic tool for removing wasp populations and is working wonders in areas of New Zealand where wasps are really harming native insects and animals.
wahern 7y ago
Where I grew up as a kid you were always warned about yellowjackets, not wasps generally. Not knowing how to discern a yellowjacket I guess I was generally wary of wasps, particularly any wasp that was yellowish, but never had the mindset that all wasps were aggressive. A wasp-shaped thing that was black wouldn't have been something I'd think twice about. What sucks about yellowjackets is that they're easy to dismiss as bees. You can ignore bees; indeed, you should ignore them. Not ignoring bees is how you get stung. Yellowjackets have a reputation for being capricious. Ignoring a yellowjacket is how you get stung, not how you avoid getting stung. At least, that seemed to be the wisdom.
- hvidgaard 7y ago
  I really don't understand how to mistake a bee for a yellowjacket - they look very different, and about the only thing they have in common are that they fly and some bees have a yellowish color that does not look like the bright yellow. They sound different, they are build quite different, and they fly differently. Just observing bees on flowers for a few minutes every day in the summer and it's obvious, at least it is to me.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
kwhitefoot 7y ago
It might even be better to leave the nests because they generally will not re-use a nest, for hygiene reasons apparently.

davidw 7y ago

The worst ones seem to be hornets/yellow jackets. They're aggressive, and want to eat anything that people have.

lostlogin 7y ago
Vespex. It’s a fantastic tool for removing wasp populations and is working wonders in areas of New Zealand where wasps are really harming native insects and animals.

wahern 7y ago

Where I grew up as a kid you were always warned about yellowjackets, not wasps generally. Not knowing how to discern a yellowjacket I guess I was generally wary of wasps, particularly any wasp that was yellowish, but never had the mindset that all wasps were aggressive. A wasp-shaped thing that was black wouldn't have been something I'd think twice about. What sucks about yellowjackets is that they're easy to dismiss as bees. You can ignore bees; indeed, you should ignore them. Not ignoring bees is how you get stung. Yellowjackets have a reputation for being capricious. Ignoring a yellowjacket is how you get stung, not how you avoid getting stung. At least, that seemed to be the wisdom.

hvidgaard 7y ago
I really don't understand how to mistake a bee for a yellowjacket - they look very different, and about the only thing they have in common are that they fly and some bees have a yellowish color that does not look like the bright yellow. They sound different, they are build quite different, and they fly differently. Just observing bees on flowers for a few minutes every day in the summer and it's obvious, at least it is to me.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

kwhitefoot 7y ago

It might even be better to leave the nests because they generally will not re-use a nest, for hygiene reasons apparently.