Paper wasps usually are fine unless you get too close. I opened up the old toolbox on my grandad’s tractor (parked outside, lid slightly ajar) as a curious kid. I was greeted by angry buzzing followed swiftly by stinging.
I also have some on the outside of my carport where the roof overhangs a bit. I could harvest my peppers a couple meters below them without issue. Once I got a little close and one did the diving/swooping “sod off” manoeuvre, but otherwise never bothered me. Their nest got taken out by a typhoon a few days ago, however
Cordylobia anthropophaga can go die in a fire.
Pest control guy killed the wasps on my balcony without asking :/ I don’t even use the balcony, they were just chillin. Now theres just a pile of corpses
I’m torn by spider wasps. I get irrationally angry when I see one of my wolf spider buddies getting dragged across the yard to their death.
That’s a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Predators are more likely to be keystone species. Spider wasps are predating on predators. You’ve got enough spiders to keep the bugs in control and wasps to take care of the extra spiders? I’m jealous!
Wait, if spider wasps hunt spiders, what do wolf spiders hunt?
Believe it or not, cats.
I haven’t killed a wasp in years. And that was only because it was building a nest inside my storm door just above eye level. Surprised the shit out of me because I barely saw the nest in the dark, struggled to change focus, and jumped back once I realized what I was seeing. Was not a fun encounter. It’s like, buddy, nobody was gonna be happy with that arrangement.
I gotta kill a wasp nest soon (my bros, paper wasps) because they’re on the balcony and I’m trying to sell my house. Anyone know of a way to relocate them instead? No, I don’t have a bee suit. I feel bad too because I’ve seen a bunch of abandoned nests around the outside while cleaning my house, in perfectly acceptable places, but out in the open so they probably got prayed on and now they’re safe behind the fake shutters. 😭
Blue-eyed ensign wasps are cute :3
Had one indoors the other day at work and someone noticed it and was bothered by its existence. I took a picture of it and the grabbed it to take it outside. Would have preferred to let it be, but worried others might hurt it :\
What about ticks?
Yeah, fuck ticks and wasps
No, wasps are fine and help deal with invasive species, you just have to not bother them. Ticks on the other hand are bad for everyone involved and deserve to be dropped into a tornado of bleach. If that seems weirdly specific, it’s because some scientists did that, then wrote a paper encouraging others to drop ticks into bleach tornadoes.
That was just so they could study the microbiome in the tick’s gut without the bacteria on it’s surface contaminating the sample.
get revenge by eating figs
I stopped being scared of wasps after learning how to read their body language. Quiet buzzing and relaxed wings = calm, whereas loud buzzing and raised wings = mad. Plus, as long as you’re not allergic, a sting is just temporary pain, which definitely isn’t worth taking their life. Wasps are literally just animals, and we should be kind to them.
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but mosquitoes though
They have actually exhaustively studied this, and they offer zero benefit, they aren’t even a good food source for any known animal.
The risks associated with mosquito eradication are extremely low.
That’s like the only bug that’s like that. The rest are crazy important to their ecosystems.
sources?
Sounds like massive human bias at play. Any source?
Bed bugs?
Huge food source for cockroaches, which are in turn a huge food source for birds and small mammals.
They live fucking everywhere too, including in caves and drainage systems.
who is putting their bed in a cave
Multiple people in opal mining areas of Australia and at least one dude in a ghost town near death valley and at least one hotel off the top of my head. I’m sure there are more
So what you’re saying is they should stay far away from civilization…
There are fish which are eating the larvae and also adult mosquitos.
They don’t feed exclusively on mosquito larvae/eggs. They can easily switch to another source.
I wonder how much has been studied about the ability of the other species to proliferate enough to make up and not be eaten out of existence. The mosquitos existing may not be the limiting factor on the population size of other species.
This is just plain false. Them and their eggs are an important food source for all kinds of aquatic animals and birds. Also, their larva remove contamins for water.
Even logically this doesn’t make sense. What’s more likely: every insect is extremely important except one, or humans are wrong (as we so often are) about one species of insect?
The specific mosquito species that carries malaria isn’t all that important. Other mosquitos will occupy it’s niches. That’s the mosquito people want to eradicate
Don’t bats eat mosquitos?
Ticks can eat shit and die too
I imagine a world without bees and wasps to look more like those in my dinosaur books.
I know they’re important. I’m also afraid of them because some members of my family have had adverse reactions to stings from wasps. I would like wasps to live happy, happy lives far, far away from me.
Ok, fine, educate me, what do wasps contribute to the environment?
They’re pollinators. A popular example is figs but you’ll see them in flowers just like bees.
Figs.
That’s only some types of figs and one type of tiny wasp. Most figs we eat are virgin fruit.
Many wasp species, while not considered pollinators, still transport pollen and pollinate plants. Others hunt pest insects. There are also many species that are vital as prey for birds
They eat the things that eat the things you eat.
Yeah… well the also eat my peaches and plums. So they eat my food, and that just ain’t cool. On top of that they set up shop by my front door and then sting me for just walking into MY house where I was letting them make a little room of their own. Not no more. Them bitchass mfers are back in hell where they belong, and my world is much better since I opened that portal for them.
yea, ok, we got rid of our peaches anyway, it wasn’t that bad :D but yea, keep boundaries, ok.
… they eat me?
People who post shit like this are being intentionally obtuse and provocative. “Wasp” is a big tent classification, and what everyone else thinks of are a few specific creatures.
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant;
Vast majority of things that are “wasps” don’t bite/sting and many are important pollinators.
The bitey stingy ones? Fuck em.
You lost me at the end. Now you’re the one being obtuse and provocative. Just because something stings or bites doesn’t mean it isn’t good for the environment.
Just because something is good for the environment doesn’t mean the environment can’t live without it
The world would survive an extinction event given enough time, that doesn’t mean the loss of biodiversity is acceptable.
Fuck you too, then
As someone who has a live and let live attitude towards most insects…when I got swarmed by ground wasps while weeding out my garden I had no mercy for them after. Aggressive doesn’t even describe how pissed they get.
It was the first time I didn’t feel bad about using insecticide. So yeah, the hyper aggressive, stinging ones can fuck right off.
I’ve found the best thing to use against wasps is diatomaceous earth. It’s non-toxic, and just very tiny silicate animals that get into their joints. It kills the entire nest and not much else around it.
That’s what they used when the wasps were in my siding and stinging me in my bed at night.
Oh that’s a great idea! I didn’t know diatomaceous earth worked on wasps.
I’ve used it to keep ticks and fleas out of the lawn area my dogs play in, and to get rid of ants.
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to dump it on the wasps, I guess I just thought they were too big? Doesn’t it work by puncturing their exoskeleton and basically sucking all their fluids out?(I could be misinformed on that)
Either way I’ll go that route if I run into that issue again! Then I don’t have to worry about contaminated areas of my lawn.
Thank you for the tip!!!
Shitty wasps like Yellow Jackets give almost all the other wasps a bad reputation. Yellow Jackets are mean and spiteful, even when they aren’t protecting their nest.
Most other eusocial wasps are pretty docile, unless you mess with their nest or really go out of your way to harass them.
In many parts of the world, like my own, there are far more species of solitary wasps than eusocial wasps. Solitary wasps are nearly all non-aggressive, they don’t have communal nests to defend, and they basically don’t have time to fuck around with stinging shit because they are too busy building a chamber for their eggs, collecting food for their upcoming progeny, and trying to stay fed and hydrated while doing it.
So what I’m getting at is that most wasps I encounter on a regular basis are pretty chill. Really, this goes for bees as well. Most of the ones I see on a regular basis are solitary types and non-aggressive. The most aggressive bees I tend to encounter are male carpenter bees. They are highly territorial and they’ll even buzz a human to scare them off. However, there’s no threat. Male bees and wasps cannot sting, they do not even have stingers.
The most aggressive bees I tend to encounter are male carpenter bees. They are highly territorial and they’ll even buzz a human to scare them off. However, there’s no threat.
No threat of stinging, anyway. They will absolutely wreak havoc on a wood framed house.
bzzzzbzzzBZZZZZ
Yes, sir, I see you. I see your little pile of sawdust on the fence, too. No, I’m not going to screw with it. I’m just installing this gate latch."
bzzzbzbbzbbzbzbzbzbzzzzz
This would go a lot faster if I didn’t have to keep ducking.
BZZZZZZ
Okay, I’m done, jeez.
BZZZZZzzzbzzzzbzzzz
…aaaaand under the fascia board it goes. Shit.
As far as I’m aware, it’s the females that dig the holes in wood as a nesting chamber, not the males. So I don’t think the males are even a thread to a wood framed house.
The females wouldn’t be a threat either if the males could just learn to keep it in their pantsTechnically correct is the best kind of correct.
I love carpenter bees. ❤️
You like having your property destroyed?
No, of course not. I’ve put out traps for them before. Then we’re really bad when I first moved into this house and I killed a lot the first two years I lived here. I rarely see them now but I still see them occasionally. If their numbers get crazy again I’ll put traps out again. For better or worse they’re the most common solitary bee in my area. I probably see at least 10x as many carpenter bees as bumble bees. I know because I’m always looking for those fuzzy butts lol.
Fair enough, seeing an occasional one is fine. I moved into a house with an infestation a while back, there were hundreds of them living in the porch rafters. There were dozens of them swarming the porch at any given time during the day.
Traps did nothing for me. I used liquid nails and filled in their holes at night while they were sleeping. 10% would chew their way back out, so I repeated until they were gone.
I don’t mind bees in general, but I have a distaste for carpenter bees after that experience.
We have paper wasps around here. They bump you before they sting you. Like “hey bump we got a nest here bump stay away bump” I’ve only been stung when I was shaking something out next to a nest and they saw it as aggressive + too close.
Yep, lots of bees and wasps do this because they don’t actually want to sting defensively if it can be avoided, so they are merely trying to intimidate a potential threat. Unfortunately, it’s very common for people to panic and behave erratically in response, and that tends to make the critters feel like they are in danger, so they do end up stinging. It basically becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
