10 ms·
I love stories about smiting wasps
by jstrong 4y ago
I love stories about smiting wasps
- hnbad 4y agoFun fact: in most of Germany this would have been a crime with a penalty of up to tens of thousands in EUR depending on the exact species.
- jstrong 4y agosounds more like a repugnant fact to me
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throw827474737 4y agoVery ignorant! One can avoid wasps initially, or also later move them more peacefully. They are very important pollinators (we lack more&more) and even have more cool duties. Not sure about your wasps over there, the annoyance factor of the wasps in Germany is usually heavily overdramatized and human arrogance at its best.
- jstrong 4y ago"yeah, what did wasps ever do to you?" attack the shit out of me for no good reason!
- aidenn0 4y agoIn the US, it's yellowjackets (vespinae, minus the hornets) that are rather annoying. They are attracted to sugar and meat, and sting rather aggressively, which makes outdoor barbecues unpleasant (to put it mildly); paper-wasps (Polistinae) are indeed rather easy to live alongside, but they look quite similar so inherit the bad-rap that yellowjackets have.
- distances 4y agoThe Central European wasp is a yellowjacket, Vespula germanica. It is very attracted to sweets and foods especially in the autumn. However, it does not usually sting unless there's a reason, such as you're trying to sit on it. I myself have had zero stings of any bee or wasp in my life so I prefer to gently coax them away from my plate. Some people are absolutely terrified about them though so "just let them be" rarely seems to be good advice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespula_germanica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespula_germanica Edit: actually I don't know which one is more common, Vespula germanica or Vespula vulgaris. I wouldn't be able to differentiate between them.
- dmix 4y ago> so I prefer to gently coax them away from my plate I’ve found wasps extremely persistent and confident in ways most insects never are. It’s one thing to gentle swat them but when they come back for 5-10min straight it's understandable why people don't like them. I also got bit on the mouth as a child when I drank a can of coke that had a wasp inside so I'm not exactly unbiased.
- ambicapter 4y ago> I prefer to gently coax them away from my plate In my experience your hand is a minor annoyance that they'll fly around and continue eating. Only way to have peace is to lay traps around your eating area.
- deelowe 4y agoWhere I live paper wasps are aggressive and multiply quite rapidly. We went from one next to dozens in just a couple of years. I probably get stung at least once a year.
- amalcon 4y agoAvoid your own house or yard? Annoyance? Tell that to my wife, my brother in law, my uncle, my cousin, or my good friend. They all could literally die if stung, and have all been to the hospital at least once after a sting.
- lm28469 4y agoAverage human in the middle of a massive, probably partially man made, extinction: "lmao I don't like them let's kill them"
- romanovcode 4y agoWhy are wasps protected in Germany? I understand bees, but what good are wasps for?
- linmob 4y agoSee https://www.thoughtco.com/what-good-are-wasps-1968081 https://www.thoughtco.com/what-good-are-wasps-1968081
- constGard 4y agoI'll add my own annecdote to this article. We had a wasp nest under the eaves of the house and I managed to successfully move them into a little hutch I built near the garden. I can't say I directly observed them saving the tomatoes, but we did have fewer tomato hornworms than in previous years. They were also really docile and tolerated a good deal of me fumbling around with the nest. I waited until it was cold out and covered up pretty thouroghly, but they were mostly content to let me flop them around with a set of long BBQ tongs.
- nibbleshifter 4y agoGermany has some very silly laws. The wasp protection one gets broken all the time for obvious reasons.
- biztos 4y agoWithout the wasps crawling into the sugar dispensers at every single outdoor café in Germany all summer long, people would eat the sugar and create a diabetes epidemic. At least that was my impression in Berlin; wasps got all the sugar, Berliners stayed pretty thin for the most part.
- petre 4y agoI suppose it's legal to pack it and ship it to the Bundestag or whichever authority came up with that law then.
- nils-m-holm 4y agoWasps have such a bad reputation. We have had nests of yellow jackets (vespula germanica), paper wasps (polistes dominula), and hornets (vespa crabro) directly on our terrace, and I have been stung once in ten years and that was my fault. There once was a nest of vespula germanica above the window of my study, a rather big nest that grew to a size of about 3000 or 4000 animals. The only thing I did about it was to close a hole in the wall, because a few of them kept coming inside. I sometimes went outside to watch the traffic at the entrance of the nest. More fun facts: wasps eat mosquitos. Lots of them! And they pollinate plants. Adult wasps are vegetarians, when they hunt or steal a piece of your steak (I have seen that happen!), then they collect food for their larvae. If you really want to get rid of wasps, use an essential oil (peppermint, lemon grass). Wasps communicate using pheromones and do not tolerate strong odor. Do not spray the nest, spray the area around the nest. You do not have to kill them.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoJust reading this makes me sweat. Aren't hornets - and wasps, to a lesser degree - extremely territorial? How do you deal with one when it find its way inside you house? Not to mention, aren't hornets and wasps natural enemies? I imagine you didn't have the two set their nests near your terrace simultaneously? I can intellectually process all the facts you wrote, but in my dealing with wasps and hornets, I find it hard to see them as anything than fast-moving balls of pain, always ready to strike at you out of nowhere, when you least expect them. Also, as a relatively fresh parent, as a threat to my children. I tend to prefer dealing with them by installing mosquito nets in all windows, but if a hornet gets in and doesn't politely leave, it's makeshift flamethrower time.
- nils-m-holm 4y agoYes, wasps are territorial, but this just means that they will defend their nests at all cost. As long as you do not rock their nest (or otherwise cause strong vibration) or stand directly in their flight path, you are safe. Different nests can be as close as a few meters and their inhabitants will mostly ignore each other. The hornets were about 7 or 8 meters away from the yellow jackets, and I have never seen them fight. If you put some fruit or honey somewhere, they will (mostly) peacefully share it. European hornets are not aggressive at all, they are just big and loud. When one gets into the house, I usually wait for it to settle down somewhere and then carefully catch it with a glass and a piece of cardboard. We also have mosquito nets on all windows and doors. Another fun fact: wasps will not spend much time around their nests. They usually leave the nest at high speed (do not stand there!) and then roam an area of multiple square kilometers. When they come back they immediately go back into the nest. Sometimes a single animal may inspect the closer area, but this is rare. Once you understand wasps, there is not much to fear. I understand your concerns regarding you child/children, and it is probably a good idea to keep wasps at a distance for some time. When children grow up, there is little danger, though. The sting of a single wasp or hornet will not harm a human being unless you are allergic. (European!) hornets use almost the same venom as yellow jackets, only more of it. (In Asia or South America, be more careful!) Finally, wasps do not want to sting you. Most of the time they are just investigating. When a flying wasp bothers you, slowly and carefully push it away with your hand. Most of the time it will just go away. On the net there are videos of some guy who tries to get stung by various wasps. It is educating to see how much he had to bother them before they did.
- throwaway85858 4y agoThis is not true. "in the last 5 years in NordRhein-Westfalen only once was someone fined 45 euros for destroying a wasps nest" https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2018/07/24/nein-wer-eine-einzige-wespe-toetet-muss-nicht-50000-euro-bussgeld-zahlen/ https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2018/07/24/nein-wer-eine-e... The fines for thousands of euros are the maximum possible fines, which massively differs to how fines are handed out in practice.
- mustyoshi 4y agoSo they have a law on the books that isn't really enforced? That's almost worse imo.
- donatj 4y agoMost laws are poorly enforced and only get invoked when you have otherwise pissed the right person off and they’re looking for something to get you on.
- wlll 4y agoIt was though, a fine was levied. There's flexibility in the punishments that are dished out in a lot of justice systems and I suspect it's to take into account that the law is not really nuanced. It's hard to write down /all/ possible motives, reasons or contexts in which a law or rule has been broken, and allowing the punishment to be scaled based on judgement seems like a reasonable thing to allow. I guess that's what judges are for. Of course this raises questions around who is making these judgements, and there's sometimes unfairness in how they are applied (eg. police in the US, broken tail lights and the colour of skin of the person stopped), but it doesn't mean that the underlying goal isn't sound, just the implementation. Personally I've had experience of this. My car tax (UK) lapsed and I didn't renew it. An oversight during a busy time of my life (moving house), and one that I noticed and fixed independently once I noticed, it must have been after a month or two. However, during the period when my car wasn't taxed the police noticed and reported it (to the authorities, not to me) who issued a fine (~£90) that was sent to me by post. Unfortunately though I'd told the authorities that I'd moved house, twice, they sent the fine and all followup correspondence to my old address and I ended up with a choice, pay debt collectors (they managed to find my new house /just fine/) for the now increased fine + expenses (in the region of ~£800) or go to court. Worst case either way was I'd have to pay the increased amount. I went to court and the three justices deliberated my case (I could hear them) and though they decided that I could afford the increased amount, it wouldn't be in anyone's interest to levy it as the circumstances in which this happened mitigated my lack of attention to the increasing fines. I wasn't a deliberate law breaker and ultimately a large fine wasn't going to change my on consideration generally good behaviour, and they made me pay the original ~£90 rather than the substantially increased amount. As the saying goes, the law is an ass.
- m463 4y agoin comparison, when I bought a live-catch mousetrap recently, the guy at the store said it was illegal to release the mouse in the county. (implying you should buy the catch-and-kill trap variety)
- ljf 4y agoI dislike wasps - BUT the good thing if you find a nest, is the knowledge that they will never return to a nest the following year - so the next actually becomes something that will help prevent future wasp infestations. When we bought our last house I changed a light fitting and live wasps poured out - I was freaked out, and put the fitting straight back. A few days later I went into the attic to put some boxes up there and found a HUGE nest near the light fitting. I put my hand on it and could feel and warmth and buzz of the wasps. It was already mid summer so I just left it (there were not loose wasps in the attic - their entrance/exit was into the eves of the house). By autumn they were gone, and we never again had a wasp issue in our house in the 10 years we lived there. I changed the light fitting the following spring.
- m463 4y agoI've found that a wasp nest is still a hint that wasps will make nests nearby. I had a shed (and a car) that had empty nests and then got nests nearby later.
- essentialfloss 4y agoThere has been a wasp nest inside a tree in my yard for 5 years.
- ljf 4y agoMaybe it is just British wasps? https://www.mjbpestcontrol.co.uk/news/how-do-you-know-if-a-wasp-nest-is-active/#:~:text=Do%20wasps%20return%20to%20the,if%20it's%20a%20suitable%20location https://www.mjbpestcontrol.co.uk/news/how-do-you-know-if-a-w....