You know, I was stung by a yellowjacket the other day, when all I’d done was try to visit their nest and say hello. It still hurts a little bit, ow ow ow, have pity on me, etc.
Today my wife tells me she put out a water dish for them, in case they were thirsty.
Whose side is she on, anyway?
Put a few drops of dish soap into that water and your problem will go away soon enough.
Mary is on natures side, and those Yellowjackets do a great job of protecting the garden from various pest species like grasshoppers and saw flies.
They only get feisty if you bother their nest.
When my child was young they once jumped into a leaf pile that had been colonized by yellowjackets. By the time I got to them they had been stung about 10 times and developed a perfectly rational hatred of them. Fast forward about 12 years and said child now IS a yellowjacket, as a math major at Georgia Tech. Not sure on what their feelings on the band are, though.
Some years ago I put out a dish like that when I noticed some butterflies sucking up the moisture from the ground under the garden tap during a hot day.
Of course I had mostly wasps coming for a drink in late summer. And some hornets.
Vespula germanica, an invasive species to the US. You need to get another invasive species, Vespa crabro, settled in your garden to take care of the yellowjackets.
8 ft away! Just asking to get swarmed.
What happens when evil cat starts colluding with the yellow jackets?
I was tempted to make some sort of smart ass remark about how Mary’s aiding and abetting them made you mad as a hornet. But, that would bee too silly. So, haven’t you ever heard the advice about not ‘touching them with a 10 foot pole’? Or, even an 8 ft Norwegian?
Help, the batteries in my sense of humor are dying.
tedw@3:
I guess he decided to follow the age-old advice: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em?
The vast majority of wildlife just wants humans to leave them alone and will only attack if they feel threatened. I draw the line at paper wasps because their idea of feeling threatened is ‘you were within 50 feet of the nest’ and their stings are nasty (3 out of 4 on the Schmidt scale), so I kill those nests if they’re close to the house. Otherwise, I leave wasps alone, just cleaning off the empty mud nests after hatching. Most Australian wasps never sting people anyway. The biggest culprits for humans are introduced: the European wasp, the honey bee, and now fire ants, which our government has decided to ignore until the pest becomes a multibillion-dollar problem affecting most of the continent.
They could just sting your exposed skin, but instead yellowjackets zip through openings in your clothes and go to town under your shirt or pants. How did they come to understand clothes?
Appeaser! X-D
(Peace in our time.)
PZ, I’d be very worried if there are any bears in the area, as your wife might decide to replace you.