that's quite enough of that, thank you

[solarbird]

OKAY GODS OR WHOEVER YOU CAN STOP MAILING ME BEES NOW

fourth day in a row i've opened my mailbox and discovered HI BEES!

or more specifically, bee

or possibly hornet

i'm not entirely sure as i am terrified of all those stingy little bastards and mostly go AGH BEES and hide until i'm sure they're gone.

stupid bees.

anna says if this keeps up we'll have to figure out who it is and mail them some rottweilers.

<edit>
Oh yeah, I forgot:
Miles today: 9
Miles out of Hobbiton: 83.8
Miles to Rivendell: 374.2

Comments

[poodlgrl.livejournal.com]

all last summer at Granny's we had a wasp problem. Eric (who did pest control for years as a young 20something) looked all over, found a few abandoned nests - sealed them up, etc. Never could find the REALLY really big, bad, source. We'd go to get in the pool at noon - 75 - 100 wasps dead all over. It was BAD, really bad.

So 2 days ago I go to Granny's to get some flower pots. Go out to the abandoned greenhouse in the back corner of the yard. Granny and I enter the greenhouse and I catch this flicker of movement and suddenly realize ACK SURROUNDED THEY'RE EVERYWHERE. Just as they started rising up to form a Looney Tunesish arrow at us, we backed out and slammed the door, and ran for the house!

[solarbird]

Well! I'll be having nightmares tonight!

EEEEEEEEE BEEEEEEEES!

[firni.livejournal.com]

Bees are cool. Wasps are THE DEVIL.

[firni.livejournal.com]

The wasps are busy early this year. One stupid fucker decided that right on our front door frame was a good place to start building a nest. So I knocked it down. It came back, and I sprayed water at it. Then tonight it came back AGAIN so I squished it with my shoe.

Going out tomorrow to buy WASP KILLAH FOAM and more wasp traps. DIE YOU BASTARDS DIE! You wanna build a nest? GO IN THE FOREST AND FIND A TREE BRANCH

[solarbird]

Wasp traps? What're these? How do they work?

[firni.livejournal.com]

They're these plastic bottles with openings in them, you bait them with water mixed with I don't know what (meat flavoring? something wasps like the smell of), the wasps fly in and drown. The bait comes with the traps. There are a couple different kinds.

[solarbird]

Cooooool. Would I find these at a drug store or would I have to go someplace more exotic?

[firni.livejournal.com]

I've seen them at freddy's, not sure if Target carries them, and I think I got them last year at Bartell's. However, the Bartell's in our neck of the woods is so hicksterville that they also have a True Value Hardware inside.

OR!

[firni.livejournal.com]

Make your own.

http://www.yankeegardener.com/wasp_trap.html

Re: OR!

[firni.livejournal.com]

This one uses jam dissolved in water.

http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/wasptrap.html

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

We've been lucky so far, somehow. We had infestations of various wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets (I can't tell the nasty stinging insects apart) for something like five years in a row, one big nest a year. After killing the nest in the ground early last spring, we haven't had any more. Oh, except for the two small nests in the doorways of my old car that I had to kill late in the summer before we finally got rid of the car. But nothing so far this year. I weeded in the backyard early so that might have kept them from finding a good place to nest.

Of course, now that I've said this I'm jinxed.

[firni.livejournal.com]

The yellowjackets went to town on my tarped Jeep last year, attempting nests under the tarp. We constantly had to open it up and spray. Then I noticed the winged bastards flying into the grill in front of the windshield, so I had Kevin check it out this winter. Yep, fuckers had built a nest INSIDE the ventilation compartment. SPLORT

So I'm being proactive this year. I see a wasp, it's dead. Since I smashed the dumbass on my front door last night, I haven't seen any others attempting to build a nest there. I mean, how stupid do you have to be to attempt a nest-building right where the damn door opens and closes several times a day? DUH *SQUISH* There, I cleaned up the wasp genepool.

[flit.livejournal.com]

Wasps move um, more jerkily and aggressively than bees, and tend to be a brighter yellow and not fuzzy.

If they are always in/around your mailbox, they are probably one of the varieties of bees/wasps that likes to build nests within. You're going to need to spray it or they'll stay. Look for a nest that looks like conjoined lumps of mud with holes in the top (mud dauber wasp) or a cluster of hexagonal paper cells (paper wasp). I'm not sure what shape of nests yellow jackets build, but I think they're generally underground, so check around the mailbox, too. Bees would have a small comb; honey bees wouldn't be interested in your mailbox, I'm pretty sure, but there are wild bees that build nests. You will want to destroy the nests, too, or they may hatch out more later.

Also, plug up any holes leading into the mailbox that are leading them to believe it is a nice safe hollow place to camp out.

[solarbird]

This took off like a bee. But I didn't get a good look at it because I was going AGH BEE.

I found a tiny paper cell nest on the inside of the front door and got rid of it, and plugged the ventilation slit in the front of the box with paper.

man i hate bees. :(

[kitchengrrl.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain. I too am stinging-insect phobic, and that extends to non-insect stingy pointy things like jellyfish and hypodermic needles. :)

When we lived in Lexington, we had a different instect infestation every winter. One year it was spiders, another year was flies. The bee year was the worst. Every afternoon when I came home from school, there were anywhere from 5 to 20 of them buzzing around this one window. Nowhere else in the house. Just this one window in MY bedroom. :P Trying to spray them with killer and then race around the bed to get out of my room was a fun bit of aerobics. :D