The latest buzz .

K

Kevin the grey

Joined
Aug 26, 2005
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Ah , life at the archery range . Beautiful fresh air. Nice scenery and even the occasional bird that looks like a white Heron . Its not a crane . Never seen one like this in ten years anywhere around here .

But I digress . There are smaller creatures there . Lively lads that like to be left alone and have the arsenal to back up their demands . My buddy and I were walking through elbow high brush looking for errant arrows . Suddenly he starts doing the watusi and skedaddles out of there at a pretty good clip . All the while yelling I knew not what .

After about 100 yards and lots of hat swiping he calms down enough to tell me it was bees . Now his nationality calls everything bees . It doesn,t matter if its a wasp or a hornet . I have good eyes and couldn,t see anything around him from 20 feet away . From the way he was swinging there was several around him .

I suspect they were wasps as I can see most bees easily at that distance .
Now in his hurry to get away mister Jack drops his wallet right close to the nest . There was no way he was going to look for it that day and I wasn,t stepping up to bat in his place . We figured to wait until the next day to retrieve it .

Does anyone know if there is a certain time of day when they are less active or less agressive ? We can,t smoke em as they are quite well hidden in heavy brush with burrs and stinging nettles . Does anyone know how to take the sting out of this situation ?
 
Esav , practical solutions . This guy actually was spraying " OFF " over his head in an effort to drive them off . I don,t know how eefective it was on them . It proabably shortened his life by a few months .

I hope we don,t have to scare up a bug suit . I have a jacket/hood good for mosquitos I doubt if it will deter a wasp .
 
When you go back, remember that dark colours make them angry, so take your shirt off and strip down as much as possible so all they see is calm-inducing bare skin. Then throw as many rocks as possible at the nest to kill most of them. After that, just walk over nice and slowly with your eyes closed (to protect them) and your mouth wide open (to show that you are a fierce predator who should be respected). You shouldn't have any problems. :D

Seriously, late in the evening will be when they're least active, but also the hardest to see. They may have a nest in the ground, so be careful. If you don't have a bee suit, wear the thickest clothing you have. Layers are a good idea. Wear a hat and gloves, and make sure your arm and leg holes are sealed. Walk in at a normal pace, and be prepared to run like hell after getting the wallet. They'll defend their nest by chasing you away.

Some Raid wasp/hornet spray wouldn't be a bad idea either. Or maybe a fire extinguisher. :)


Chris
 
What Chris said. They settle down at night.

Along the same lines, avoid any artificial illumination. They can't see well at night (much as we can't) but they can spot a light easily. That's what they'll aim for if they get mad.

Get the spray that's made to kill wasps and hornets. It's designed to provide more range than most other types and will persist in the nest if you hit it, killing the fliers as they return. Give them a good shot or two at night and come back the next day. If enough survived to still cause problems, hit them again.
 
Thanks Dave . Your advice as well as other peoples suggestions leads me to believe the spray might be the most viable alternative .
 
You should be able to walk in slowly and pick up the wallet, after they've calmed down. They don't like their nests shaken or disturbed. Ask the guy what he was doing when they swarmed him. He probably stepped on, kicked, rustled, shook, etc. the nest, perhaps inadvertently. If you identify the nest and leave it alone you should be ok.

I've had this adventure a few times. One time, in college, I was picking blackberries. Unbeknownst to me, my knees were jostling a hornet's nest. My head started buzzing and I started having strange visual effects. At first I thought I was going to faint. Then I realized it was a completely external phenomenon. Hundreds of hornets were buzzing around my head. One then stung me on the ear to drive the point home. I took off running towards the river, about 1/8 mile away through a meadow. I was shaking my head violently to shake the buggers off, and my glasses whipped off my head. About the time I got to the river I lost the last of them so I didn't have to jump in. After waiting a few minutes I went back and found my glasses, and went back and identified the nest. They were nice as long as I wasn't jostling them with my knees.

Generally they'll leave you alone if you don't bother them. My daughter is alergic to bee stings so sometimes I destroy the nests. For nests in the ground like yellow jackets some gasoline down the hole and then lighting it works. For nests in trees there is commercial spray product available that will spray several feet onto the next and kill them. I've used this several times, most recently a couple of weeks ago. Mostly though, if they don't pose a threat to my daughter I just leave them alone and don't rile them up.
 
Howard excuse me for chuckling . Your description and my buddies antics remind me so much of comical movies with similar attacks in them . These buggers followed my buddy for well over 80 yards and for several minutes . Even 15 minutes later he had a couple return to buzz his head . He may very well have jostled the nest or disturbed vegetation which did so .

On a separate note I just had a visit of a good friend at the range who had
an effective method for dealing with individual wasps which would buzz around him . He would simply state forcefully " Go away or I am going to kill you " . It worked every single time .

I used to kick them out of the air in my younger years . Either they have gotten faster or I have gotten slower ..... Its amazing how fast they have gotten . L:O:L
 
They really aren't plotting their next move for when you return.:) Just go back around dusk, pick it up, and leave.

Over on R's Forum, HollowDweller was working up a real vendetta with some yellowjackets. I believe he was pricing napalm the last time I read the thread.

Almost any spray will discourage them until you leave, if it is just an incidental encounter...soap spray, WD-40, uh....spray paint (but I really NEVER EVER used it...uh...it was just something I read somewhere)....

I get wasps, mud daubbers, and yellowjackets in the cycle shed. Some moth balls in the spring help a bunch, if I remember to do it. The darned daubbers have built nests in my helmet, in the fingers of some gloves lying on the bikes, and on tank bag creases.

We are not amused.
 
Kevin the grey said:
On a separate note I just had a visit of a good friend at the range who had
an effective method for dealing with individual wasps which would buzz around him . He would simply state forcefully " Go away or I am going to kill you " . It worked every single time .

I used to kick them out of the air in my younger years . Either they have gotten faster or I have gotten slower ..... Its amazing how fast they have gotten . L:O:L
Click to expand...

Killing them is bad karma. I'm like you. I usually kick them in the privates and tell them to leave me alone. That does the trick. Or you can give them a slap right under the antennae. Where do you find the most effective place to target your kicks?
 
Reminds me of the time, several years ago, I unknowingly disturbed some yellow-jackets toward the back of our lot. As it turned out, there were probably only a handful, but they managed to nail me about a dozen times as I ran yelling and swatting toward the back door of our house. Thankfully, I am not allergic to bee stings, but they hurt pretty bad for a while. My boys, who had been playing in a small pool near the house, witnessed the entire sequence of events and occasionally still like to perform an animated impression of me in my distressed state. They seem to recall the whole affair with much more humor than I do. At least someone got some entertainment out of it. :)

Eric
 
chrisbrogden said:
When you go back, remember that dark colours make them angry, so take your shirt off and strip down as much as possible so all they see is calm-inducing bare skin. Then throw as many rocks as possible at the nest to kill most of them. After that, just walk over nice and slowly with your eyes closed (to protect them) and your mouth wide open (to show that you are a fierce predator who should be respected). You shouldn't have any problems. :DChris
Click to expand...

ROTFLMAO!!!:thumbup:

My chiropracter is a short round guy with an interest in deer hunting. The previous year he built a tree stand about 40 feet up. Marked it with a GPS. This year he set out in total darkness, managed to find the tree. Climbed to his stand and settled in with his rifle.

As the beautiful dawn began to break he began to hear a humming sound very near him. A peek below the board of the tree stand revealed the large hornet nest right under his butt. They had built it there during the year after he made the tree stand.

He did not have a lot of options. He decided to try to give then a wide berth by climbing out on a limb and going around them.

Fortunately they were still groggy and just beginning to wake up, so they did not attack. Unfortunately the limb was not enough to support him. It bent down slamming him against the trunk. He lost his grip and slid down through the branches, grabbing enough branches to slow his fall before they would slip from his grasp and then grabbiing more as he descended. This technique saved him from serious injury, but he did land butt first on the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of him.

Then the rifle, that was following him down, landed on his leg. Other than a bruised leg, a sore butt and bleeding hands, he had no injuries. He did call it a day.
 
See if your chiro wouldn't really rather pursue bungee jumping; I'm sure it's safer.
 
Spectre said:
See if your chiro wouldn't really rather pursue bungee jumping; I'm sure it's safer.
Click to expand...

Well, HE needed a chiropracter after that!

Bungee jumping! (Shudder)

A friend went bungee jumping from a tower. You pay, go up there and jump. They had some kind of air bag at the bottom with a big cross in the middle of it and a question: "Are you ready to meet Him?"
 
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