Good or bad wasps?

[tmschuller]

Stung on Saturday by a wasp.. I had just taken out about 10 of his family with carb cleaner... didn’t even see the little beestard until it got a revenge shot in and my calf was on fire. Wish I had some of the ban roll on to try!

 

[Mongo59]

When I bought my farm it had an old wood burning cook stove in the barn. One day I decided to move that stove and when I bumped it a buzzing sound came out of it and a big wood bee flew out of the stove pipe and got me right on the tip of my nose.

Well you can imagine what that felt like and I swatted him off as fast as I could and all the time walking to my truck my whole nose started to throb and swell.

My truck was parked close and I got the roll on from the glove box and smeared it on and rubbed it in. When I started my upper lip was already starting to pull tight, after a couple of minutes all the symptoms resolved and I went back to work, but I saved moving the stove until the dead of winter.

I not only recommend Ban roll on, but I am a member...

 

[BigBoxaJunk]

As a natural history professional, gotta put my 2 cents in.
All these hymenopterans are pollinators, and were doing the job long before honeybees got here. They also do great damage to garden and farm pests, especially caterpillars. If you are allergic, I understand your reaction. But I never harm them unless they pose a direct hazard to people.

Late summer/fall can be a problem. Usually they are programmed to defend the nest, but as the year gets later, their social order begins to break down, and they start defending personal space more (especially yellowjackets). They will go after your pop (for themselves) and your chicken sandwich (for the babies), and don't care who gets hurt in the process.

I'm another biology nerd, and I agree. I've always had a live-and-let-live policy with most critters, and I feel rewarded by the diversity of life on my little place. Like Expat said, as a gardener, I love it when I see wasps getting cabbage worms and asparagus worms. We'll mostly give them space when they set up a nest, but I'll also take a nest down and kill the momma if it's in a bad spot or if they decide to cop an attitude.

One crazy thing that happened recently, my son and I were night-hiking on a trail in Perry County, and several times one or both of us had a huge wasp go after our headlamps, hitting us right in the face. No stings, but I killed two of them, and it happened 5 different times over a 6 or 7 mile hike. I looked it up when we got home, and it turns out the European Hornet, the only true hornet in the US, has one unique trait in that they often hunt/forage at night, and are attracted to light sources. Night-hiking can be trippy anyway, and having a huge hornet land on your eye will really get the adrenaline going.

 

[Mongo59]

...and sphincters oscillating...

 

[Leadeye]

You can seriously reduce the number of yellow jacket/hornet nests that you will have to fight in late summer and fall by killing queens early in the year. For a few weeks, usually in May the queen has to hustle to get a nest going. She's out there gathering materials and food for larva. each one you kill is a dead nest. Both the gardener and I carry Raid Wasp and Hornet while working in the spring and kill every oversize yellow jacket/hornet we see. The result is no problems around our yard later in the year. For ones I find in the woods, toss a piece of rotted fruit next to the entrance hole and you'll attract a skunk or raccoon which will finish off the nest. This time of year seed ticks are bad enough without stepping on the land mine of a yellow jacket nest.

 

[Michigan Slim]

I killed the nests in my deer blinds a couple weeks ago. A week later I checked them and the wasps were chewing the larvae out and dropping them on the floor. Never seen that before. Used a full can to really soak the ceiling of each blind.

 

[Pepi]

I don't thing I've ever seen the yellow faced wasps before?

Those are grasshoppers