Ouch, you bastards!

[Wingedwheel]

So having been gone for work all summer I needed to do quite a bit of catching up on things around the house. my wife had the neighbor's kid cut the grass but that was it. I tried to edge but gas was pouring out of the carb so that was my first project. Got that rebuilt and decided since I was in carb mode I'd take care of some other things that had been sitting in my shed too long. I had a generator and another lawn mower that had sat wayyyy to long so I figured I'd do those also. The mower was stuck in the back behind my snowblower so I was pulling on the handle and jerking it around to get it out when I looked down and noticed a swarm coming out from under the mower. I immediately sprang into action and did what I was supposed to do, I ran screaming like a little girl all the way to the front of the house while getting stung.lol luckily they couldn't get me through my shirt but I was wearing shorts and got 4 stings on my legs and a couple on the backs of my arms. I went in the house, Told the wife what had happened and she gave me a couple of Benedryl to counteract any reactions. Luckily I'm not allergic but ya never know with multiple stings. I did exact my revenge though. I waited until things calmed down, threw two bug bombs in the shed and shut the door. this is what I got out from under the mower the next morning.

was a big nest of Yellow jackets but now they're all dead! whoohooo. Still itchy today but I read that the venom is alkaline based so I put some vinegar on the stings and it really helped! good thing to know....

 

[MaxPete]

I know it’s not environmentally correct or sensitive or anything like that - but I just totally utterly HATE those f@cking things. They scare the crappola out of me too - and make me run screaming like a....

....well, you know.

Glad you’re OK.

Pete

 

[Wingedwheel]

Pete, It's funny how everyone is worried about the environment now. I get it and that's a good thing but if it had been a small nest I would have just got a can of WD40, lit the spray and used it like a flame thrower to torch the bastards. I know that's not eco friendly either but it's a lot more fun......

 

[gggGary]

I mostly let em lie but yeah when it's built on something you need to use the chemicals come out. I've got my "bee" stories. Worst was pulling out a section of railroad tie retaining wall with a skid steer and chains, the ground bees inside were not amused! Hilarity ensued. (for the spectators)

 

[DaveO]

Bee stings are acidic. You need to put something alkali or base on it. Bicarbonate of Soda (Baking Soda)
Wasp stings are alkali. You need to put something acidic on it. Vinegar is ideal.

B / C
V W
Just remember the next and previous letter in the alphabet.

Ant bites are acid too (formic acid).

Hate wasps too. Glad you're OK.

Dave

 

[Mailman]

Here in Az we have killer bees.

Seriously, they are really aggressive. So this hive took up residence in a garbage can next to my back yard shed. My backyard , overnight, became this impenetrable swarm.
There are services you can call, but I don’t need no stinking service.
My wife still laughs hysterically at this, but I put on all my motorcycle gear, leather jacket, full coverage helmet tall boots, wrapped my neck and taped my pant legs closed and went to battle.
I took a broom handle to flip the lid off of the garbage can , and with a garden hose already set up to spray a wide fan , I flipped the lid off and turned on the hose, then left the hose propped up and just let it run for about 30 minutes. It knocked all the bees down eventually , but surprisingly, after turning the water off, they just dried off and flew away.
Within two days of being in my garbage can they had built a surprisingly large hive.
I had neighbors that paid hundreds of dollars to have hives removed.
But my cheap bastard technique worked really well......and was a source of funny stories for my wife for years!

 

[robinc]

I had neighbors that paid hundreds of dollars to have hives removed.

Sounds like a viable sideline retirement business for you Bob.....

 

[MaxPete]

WW - couldn't agree more!!!!

Gary - you made me snort!

Bob - you da man on those low cost home-made C-B remedies!

Dave - how does one identify one's antagonist when one is running and screaming like a little girl and trying to escape?

I prefer to just apply alcohol (internally) to assuage my pain while plotting my revenge and then burning the little buggers out.

 

[59Tebo]

We just paid (a reasonable fee, really.) to have a yellow jacket nest exterminated. We've had them before. They are like certain forms of cancer. By the time you find out you have them, it's too late, and the nest (tumor) is enormous. The wife said "we have yellow jackets in the corner of the house." When I looked, it was like LAX/LaGuardia/O'Hare combined. Time for the professionals. The yellow jackets had gotten in the house and built their nest in one corner of the basement. The gentlemen dispatched them promptly. This was a couple of weeks ago. The corner where the nest was is very inaccessible. I don't think even they realized the size of the nest. While cleaning it out today, I removed layer upon layer of nest material for what seemed like hours. This nest was at least as large as the one they took care of 5 years ago, in a different part of the house, and they estimated that one at 20,000 yellow jackets. These critters are not to be fooled with by amateurs! Sure, a small nest, wait until after dark and blast them! But if they get in your house, and you can't see the nest, suck it up, and call a professional exterminator. Then apply alcohol (internally) to assuage the pain you feel in your wallet, and take comfort knowing the little bastards are dead, dead, dead!!!

 

[MaxPete]

Agreed.

 

[TwoManyXS1Bs]

Somewhere around late spring, our local auto parts places experience a run on brake cleaner, ya know the stuff that'll shoost a 20 foot stream.

Becomes a sporting event. Antiaircraft fire...

 

[Mailman]

I had a wasps nest inside a big shrub. I didn’t realize they were in there until I was going at the shrub with hedge clippers, then they lit me up.
So I ran to the hardware store and bought a couple of big spray cans of wasp spray. Stuff works great, shoots out a nice long stream, you can drop them instantly if they are flying at you.
I went back out in the yard armed with my spray and started going at them. We had quite a little fight for a while. I was hosing down the shrub and spraying them as they came out.
This went on for several minutes, but I got em all.
Next day I went outside and all the leaves had fallen off of the shrub. That stuff was a better defoliant than Agent Orange.
They didn’t bother mentioning that on the can.
After that I found you could get the job done with just a garden hose and not kill your shrub in the process.

 

[TwoManyXS1Bs]

Haha, I guess that water, a rare and expen$ive commodity in Arizona, can be deadly to some of your critters.

Friend of mine, allergic to bug stings, showed me some tricks to manage yellow jackets. One uses about 1/4" of gasoline in the bottom of a large, wide-mouthed jar. Best used on nests found under the eaves. He'd slowly raise the jar from directly below the nest, being careful to avoid getting the wasps to *alert* (when they lift their wings). Slowly raising the jar, the fumes would knock-out the wasps, and they'd simply drop into the jar. Slowly continuing upward, when all the wasps have dropped off, he'd press the jar up against the eave, then slide it sideways to break off the nest. I've done this, works great.

Doesn't work well in bushes, tho'...

 

[650Skull]

What we call paper wasps, i wait until dark when they are home asleep...........make up a petrol soaked rag around a stick then light it up and hold it under the nest.......not recomented near a house..............have heard of some people lighting up a bust from a spray can, but i'm to chicken and like having 2 hands

 

[Wingedwheel]

650Skull..... Like I said, I like using WD40 for a flame thrower. It's got a lower combustion point than gasoline so it's not nearly as scary and it's a helluva lot more fun than regular bug spray...

 

[MaxPete]

650Skull..... Like I said, I like using WD40 for a flame thrower. It's got a lower combustion point than gasoline so it's not nearly as scary and it's a helluva lot more fun than regular bug spray...

You made me snort WW!

 

[gggGary]

These critters are not to be fooled with by amateurs! Sure, a small nest, wait until after dark and blast them! But if they get in your house, and you can't see the nest, suck it up, and call a professional exterminator. Then apply alcohol (internally) to assuage the pain you feel in your wallet, and take comfort knowing the little bastards are dead, dead, dead!!!

You mean I shouldn't have gone in and crawled across the attic to get rid of the nest that wasn't happy about my hammering in nails by them during a siding job? I told my wife to hold the ladder but by the time I got back to it she had wandered off........

 

[Downeaster]

I have a middlin'-sized ditch that runs right through the middle of my property and about 6 feet from the North side of the house at closest approach.

It is seriously ugly, but it's a state-mandated drain and I can't move it or fill it in. I COULD run culvert and fill over that, but I don't have 4 or 5 thousand dollars I've got nothing better to do with. So, a couple of times a Summer, I climb down in there with a weed-whacker and clean it out so it's just ugly, not hideous.

Some time back, I was doing that job and weed-whacked open the entrance to a hive of ground wasps/hornets/evil sumbitches. They seemed peeved...

I immediately discovered two things:

1. I can shot-put a 15 pound weed-whacker 123.4 feet without a wind up.
2. I can run fast enough to pass said weed-whacker before it hits the ground.

 

[FLEA]

What we call paper wasps, i wait until dark when they are home asleep...........make up a petrol soaked rag around a stick then light it up and hold it under the nest.......not recomented near a house..............have heard of some people lighting up a bust from a spray can, but i'm to chicken and like having 2 hands

bloke out bakerville way used a pressure can of some sort and a lighter to flame up a paper wasp nest in a bush near his house , finished burning out a thousand or so hectares , made him real popular with the niebours

 

[MaxPete]

.....Don’t try this at home kids....