Tyler H wrote: I enjoy baiting them and trying to get a vector back to the hive when they depart, although the tried and true method of locating a colony is a weedeater.
I choked on my chili when I read that.
Tyler H wrote: I enjoy baiting them and trying to get a vector back to the hive when they depart, although the tried and true method of locating a colony is a weedeater.
I choked on my chili when I read that.
Vigo wrote: We don't have any truly aggressive stinging insects down here that I can think of.
You have Africanized Honeybees in Texas. I conducted research on honeybees for a number of years and being an outdoor type, I'm very comfortable with bugs. I usually worked my bees in nothing but a tee shirt and shorts. Very rarely I'd wear a veil if I didn't know the colony or if a docile colony was in an aggressive mood. We don't have Africanized bees, but from what I understand, they make Yellow Jackets seem like kittens. I'd fully armor up if I had them here. It's not uncommon for people to misidentify various bees and similar insects, so it's not surprising that you might not be familiar with actual Yellow Jackets. They are especially aggressive as compared to their peers. I say this to say that a similar mistake with Africanized Honeybees could be deadly. Be careful.
The only time I don't really freak out around bugs are bumblebees and sweat bees.
Bumblebees are like the Cheech & Chong of the insect world. They're super easy going and you can almost hear them apologize after they bump into you. I had a "pet" bumblebee at work, it lived out by the scrap tires. I think it lost its colony or something. It was always out there doing whatever it is that bumblebees do. I found it dead in autumn and felt a bit sad.
The one rallycross we had last year had swarms of sweat bees. They're totally harmless little bugs (and I do mean little, they're like half the size of a honeybee) but their life mission is to find sweaty people and land on them. This is unsettling. Mostly I don't like the idea that I might accidentally hurt them, so it's like, I want to swat them away, but I don't want to hit them.
I was a 12 year old when I first encountered the wrath that is a swarm of yellow jackets. At the time I was gainfully employed by my hippy sandal-wearing next door neighbor as his lawnmower. He insisted I not bag the clippings as they would return their nutrients back into the ecosystem or some E36 M3 like that.
I was walking the ol Honda pushmower across the yard on a hot Georgia afternoon. Shorts, short sleeves, not wearing much else but a layer of sweat. I had no idea what was coming.
The deck of the mower passed directly over the hole of an underground nest of yellow jackets. The suction force of the mower evacuated the entire hive, rung em through a vortex of spinning metal blade and clippings, and ejected all few dozen of those bothered little bastards out the side of the mower. I was stung over 20 times at once all over my body while simultaneously educating the neighbor's 6 year old daughter on the newfound vocabulary of a preteen boy.
berkeley yellow jackets. berkeley em to hell.
Knurled wrote: The only time I don't really freak out around bugs are bumblebees and sweat bees. Bumblebees are like the Cheech & Chong of the insect world. They're super easy going and you can almost hear them apologize after they bump into you. I had a "pet" bumblebee at work, it lived out by the scrap tires. I think it lost its colony or something. It was always out there doing whatever it is that bumblebees do. I found it dead in autumn and felt a bit sad. The one rallycross we had last year had swarms of sweat bees. They're totally harmless little bugs (and I do mean little, they're like half the size of a honeybee) but their life mission is to find sweaty people and land on them. This is unsettling. Mostly I don't like the idea that I might accidentally hurt them, so it's like, I want to swat them away, but I don't want to *hit* them.
Another common mix up are Bumblebees and Carpenter bees. People will say carpenter bees don't sting but the females can, and they are super aggressive around their nests. They also hurt when they sting.
You have Africanized Honeybees in Texas.
I think i would put them in the same category as lightning and tornados as far as my statistical chance of having physical contact with them. Africanized honeybees exist but i've encountered infinitely more of each of the 4 types of venomous snakes in the area than africanized honeybees. Lucky for me, i guess!
The right way to deal with yellowjacket wasps is with liquid nitrogen from a welding supply store. Completely nontoxic and leaves no residue other than dead yellowjackets.
I love yellowjackets my favorite encounter with one of them was when I was about sixteen, pushing a heavily loaded wheelbarrow up the "dump pile" in cutoff sweats. I had my momentum up and just hit the bottom of the pile, when a yellowjacket flew up my shorts, abs immediately considered it my fault. I threw the wheelbarrow over the end of the pile, and promptly pulled down my shorts. I was a fairly good shot with my Daisy 10 pump air rifle. So I spent the next week or so stationed 10 feet away from the nest, quietly picking off every one of those motherberkeleyers that I saw.
I got pretty good with that BB gun. My dad was mad that I was "shooting at the house" until he saw what I was doing, then he just wanted to watch.
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