Got plenty of these around to back them up. They get bigger every year too. I suspect they are breeding with Grey Wolves.

@August It's busy in your neck of the woods.

Upstate Maine got lots of critters. :)

@August I replaced the batteries in the cam. Reformatted. It is back to recording. I have the masked bandit at the squirrel feeder Wednesday night. I let the cam to keep recording. See what else is showing up at the buffet.

:up:

What I'm dealing with now. Ground wasps! Discovered this nest by getting stung 13 times. :wah:

https://youtu.be/rzLGge_T5HI

Aggressive species? I got stung by Wasps just twice in my life, and never by bees although having been around bee farms repeatedly, having them flying around and crawling on me in numbers.



Bees I always liked. Maybe they like me, too.

Gas and a well placed match will take care of that. I ran over a nest once while cutting grass. Felt my hand burning. Looked down to see hornets just stinging away. Gas and a match.

I have some good footage of my masked bandit. I will post it soon.

Why not leaving them alone if they do not hunt you down? I had Wasps under my roof twice, they swarmed on my loggia. I let them do their thing, and they did not take much interest in me. Neighbours were near hysteria, I said in autumn the show is over. And thats what happened: a few weeks later the show was over.

Gassing them in Grmany would get you into serious and very costly troubles. Tens of thousands of coins are possible penalties. Letting them being removed by specialists is only allowed under circumstances when they pose a risk to the public. And even then they usually get relocated, not wiped out.

Thats why I asked about the species, whether it is explicitly aggressive. If not, just leave them alone. Time passing by will do away with them soon enough.

Typical city dweller has no clue of the dangers that an underground yellow jacket nest poses to anyone nearby. :roll:

In my situation this was a public pool facility were many people walked by the nest. Once sting to a pool member and allergic reaction would cause a host of problems for all involved. The hornet in this nest are non-aggressive...until one drives a 3 blade Gravely lawn tractor over the nest. My hand was stung over 6 times. The swelling was quite evident and painful. The nest could not be left in the area it was located.

I see.

I had to wack Wasps from my back door.
They were in an area that We go in and out of the house so the potential threat for a sting was there.
And I was changing the light fixtures with in inches of the nests.
So bye bye Wasps.

Eh, no thanks. These are not honey bees, my friend. They stung me, they proved they were a risk. My hands swoll up like Mickey Mouse hands and I was walking like Frankenstein after he was probed by aliens. Wasps can build all the nests they want in the forest but when they trespass into my flower beds and ambush me-- it's war!


Gas but no match.

After finished the YouTube Academy of Wasp Control yesterday, I waited until night to attack, all the professors say they are dormant at night.

I did buy a beekeeper hat and veil, wore a long sleeve shirt and MC pants, leather gloves. I got a bucket of dirt and a half-gallon of gasoline. Plan was to pour the gas down the 1 inch diameter hole, then dump the dirt on it, creating a seal to trap them inside with the gas vapors.

Well, I guess I should have waited until "long after" dark cuz when I got ready to pour, there were about 8 standing by the entrance to the hole. I imagine they were workers on a smoke break or perhaps the last shift of guards. :o

Well, as soon as I saw them -- they saw me and attacked. I figure it's all or nothing now! I poured the gas down the hole while they buzzed all around me, and right in front of my face. Then I dumped the bucket of dirt and made my retreat. Made sure there weren't any stuck to me before shucking all my gear.

So, a sealed hive filled with gasoline vapors, that should do the trick. Or so I thought...:haha:

https://youtu.be/RtbwYO3Fo6c

Still, I insist by theoretical knowledge as well as practical experience that it depends on two factors how aggressive wasps are: time of year, and species. Some wasp species are more aggressive than others, and at the end of the summer season, when they need protein-rich food more desperately than earlier in the year, they become more pressing in their search for food - and some people do no react well to that.

But as I said, I lived with a wasp hive twice. My loggia is 1.5m x 4.5m, with the door pretty much in the centre, when i said "under the roof", it means I had the wasp's "castle" less than two meters and a bit over my head's height to the right of the door - and there also was a door to a small side room where I store some outdoor and balcony items, that door was directly under the wasps. I moved slower, avoided knocking and hammering the wall near their defence perimeter, and never blew/exhaled at their direction (wasps interpet CO2 as the nearness of an animal's mouth and turn aggresisve due to feeling threatened). You hardly can live closer together with wasps than I did in those two years. I never got stung, even when sometimes they crawled on my arms or bald head, but I reacted cool, did not wave, blow, slapped at them. Many people find it difficult not to react to bees and wasps beign near to them, and react wrong. And with children its another thing, too, I absolutely understand that, I am not naive. The two times I got stung was when i was a kid and teen, too.

All I want to get across is that it is not always necessary to blow them all up, just because they are there. In many situations, coexistrence is possible - if you behave right. And that correct behaviour is maybe not a big issue, as long as you have no kids, or are allergic.

Of course, as in Warhawks exmaple, in some situations its not possible, and then, some wasp species are more aggressive than others. The ones I had were what in Germany is known as "Gemeine Deutsche Wespe", they are quite common, and they have no good reptuation, are said to be more aggresive than some others. Still, I got along with them without any incident, and at closest range. I have electric jeaulousies and they had their nest right in the box where the motor and jealousies are housed in, and every day that thing goes up and down with rumbling sound and vibrations. Even that did not start them to pearl harbouring me. The most annoying thing with them was when they were all dead and gone to open the wall panel and get the wasp's paper castle out of there.