I once bought a house with two pear trees, and I quickly learned to pick up any fruit that dropped on the ground. The juice would ferment under the skin, and yellow jackets would pierce the skins, and get drunk. Then they’d chase me around the yard when I tried to work in my big organic vegetable garden.
It turns out, yellow jackets are mean drunks, but that’s probably not a surprise.
Paper wasps have a unique perspective of “provoked.”
I was tired so I just decided to land and rest on your head. Why are you provoking me?
I was building a nest in the only door you use to come in and out of your house. When you tried to leave, I flew directly into your path and basically body checked you. Why are you provoking me?
Yeah, those wasps are assholes, just not quite as much of assholes as yellow jackets. Weirdly enough, I’ve been stung by everything on this list that is capable of doing so including bumble bees. Bees hate me and I hate them, but I still refrain from killing them because we need them around.
I always avoid killing bees but I am terrified of wasps. I grew up getting stung by these fuckers constantly. That’s how I found out I’m allergic.
They’re extremely aggressive and live in giant nests together. If you kill one, it releases pheromones or something that signals to the others and they swarm. I would beg my parents to do something about them because they made life absolutely miserable, but they had this weird fatalist attitude about them like “the wasps were here long before we were. They’ll be here long after.”
Realized as an adult that decoy paper wasps nests are very cheap and work surprisingly well as a repellent. You can also just use a brown paper sack. Could have saved myself from some very traumatic encounters if I had known that sooner.
I like supporting local insects through gardening
Honey bees don’t actually “need help the most”, they’re widely kept for honey production. Solitary wasps (of which there are many species) are much more endangered. Not yellowjackets, though, fuck those guys.
European honey bees are an invasive species in a lot of places. They’re actually part of the problem because they are imported for our use and crowd out the native bees.
This is also not at all comprehensive. There are many thousands of species of wasps and native bees. Not to mention all the yellow stripy flies that mimic wasps.
Yellow jackets are generalist predators. As long as they aren’t making a nest somewhere real close to where you want to be, they are good at killing a whole lot of pests.
It was just a little joke really, I’m not going to war with yellow jackets or anything, but one did sting me for no reason once, so tensions do remain high between our cultures.
I have an arrangement with the spiders (although the Toilet Compacts got violated by a spider what crawled on my drying off towel last week, the bastard) and if you need some spiders to go to war I can send some to your aid
Spiders are quite a mercurial ally, their individuality renders agreements reached through collective bargaining to be seen really more as guidelines than a permenent arrangement. Still, in my experience, if you treat them fairly, they respond in kind. My relationship with them has been quite strong since I rescued a big one that fell in the bath and attended one of their bake sales.
One fell in your bath? That’s a violation of the Toilet Compacts oh your gods what is this world coming to do no spiders honor interspecies accords anymore
I think it was meant as in ‘we need to build them hives and stuff’ who knows. Definitely don’t need much help, those guys
They’re pretty dumb. They drown in my bird bath constantly.
Dirt Daubers do not build nests in the ground. They build single solitary cells one at a time. Sometimes on top to each other but often in separate places. They do not live in the nests - they just lay larvae and a dead bug inside for those who come after.
I have them all over my garage. I have accepted that something will live in the eaves and they are the least aggressive to humans. They are territorial and they will keep the other “wasps” away.
I can literally scrape their nests off and throw them out in front of them.
Absolutely zero parental instincts.
This list seems to have been written by paper wasps cause that’s the only bullshit on here. Those things will sing you for whatever reason it deems necessary.fuck those things
My most recent run in with these fuckers involved one building a nest in the BED OF MY TRUCK and then stinging me after I drove to work and got out. Bastards. I respect most insects but wasps get the death spray without question.
Death spray, every time!
They are all over the place here. They are Satan incarnate and will sting the shit out of you for any or no reason.
Wasps are pollinators too 🥺
SOME wasps are, and often not very good ones.
Yellowjackets aren’t anywhere near prolific enough at pollination (or the insect corpse cleanup they specialize in) to make those flying terrorists worthwhile.
Solitary wasps like tree wasps are cool, though, they can stay.
Yellowjackets are definitely bastards. As far as I can tell they don’t provide any benefit to society whatsoever.
There are fig wasps, of course. And other species, yes, that aren’t quite as good as bees at pollinating, but neither are butterflies, but no one has a problem with labeling them as pollinators. Plus there are the wasps that eradicate pests. The year I had a paper wasp family move in near my garden was a bumper year for my brassicas, because they absolutely annihilated the cabbage white caterpillar population. Basically, wasps aren’t just useless enemies.
Basically, wasps aren’t just useless enemies.
True if most wasps, yeah, but not yellowjackets. They can fuck right off.
Astonishing how often I see someone start swatting at a paper wasp when it gets curious.
The fuck? It’s like a dog smelling you, but that dog has a stinger. You don’t swat at the fucking thing. You chill out and act real casual. Maybe pretend you didn’t even notice it. What wasp? I didn’t see any wasps. Now check my back so we can get our asses inside.
Agreed. I was taught to stand still and let the bee do its thing.
Maybe that was all just propaganda by big bee……
When I was a teenager, I grew up in the country so we had wasps everywhere. I hated them. One morning in the summer I was dead asleep–until I was awakened by a wasp that stung me in the fucking neck. So this asshole had to fly into my room decide to land on me, probably crawl around a bit and then decide “Fuck this guy right here NNNNNNG”. I was so goddamn angry and confused. I had to get up and tend to the sting because I swell like a moteherfucker. However, being a lazy teenager, I went back to bed. I woke up about 10 minutes later because I then felt it CRAWLING ON ME AGAIN. I was so fucking furious, I just monkey pounded it into a million little pieces with my fists in the mattress.
Fuck wasps, I spent many years capturing them, holding them with tweezers and slowly cooking them over a candle. Not sorry.
This is me except with a Yellowjacket that flew into my ear and stung me in my ear canal then casually flew out.
It was actually so profound that it caused problems with my wax production and skin in that ear, and have had constant allergy issues with it ever since.
I swore to myself I’d wage war on every yellowjacket from that day forward. Same thing with carpenter bees, I actively swat and stomp those buggers - they’ve destroyed so much of my structural wood on my property they are beyond a nuisance.
Build a bee box for the carpenter bees. They arent completely terrible!
I am not trying to be a one-upper, but I do have a similar story.
Before rennovating a house I lived in, we had TERRIBLE windows. The kind that let drafts of air and all sorts of creepy crawlies in. Well, an engineering paper wasp decided to build a nest in the eaves above my bathroom window. I was battling those red wasps with the jet black wings for a whole summer.
I was in the shower one day. I got done. I grabbed my towel from the towel hook and started drying off. It turns out there was a wasp on the towel, and it stung the shit out of my abdomen in a few places.
I ran around naked in the house swatting at the little bastard. I had to take another shower because of all of the sweat from running around swatting.
I got out of the shower to ANOTHER wasp on my towel. I noticed this one before it stung me.
I have since replaced the windows, but I STILL inspect my towels to this day.
Bastards
Honey Bee
is the bee that needs help the most
I’d argue the opposite. There are thousands species of solitary native bees in small niches that need help way more. By contrast honey bees are either livestock or feral livestock that are competing with the native bees.
Yes. Thank you. When I was a bee keeper I learned some about the things. Do honey bees have various issues and struggles … Sure. Are the large varieties of native wild bees soooo much more fucked - yep. Yes they are.
Yay came here for this. I was all excited to start a couple of beehives in my back yard. Then I discovered their lineage and what they’re doing to the native bees. Instead I realized I am hosting tons of huge ass bumblebees in my yard, and I’ll just let them be(e). Maybe get some of those bee houses for solitary bees instead.
Also, it’s better to grow native plants than to provide a house. A house without food is useless.
The myth that bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly according to science needs to die.
They wouldn’t be able to fly in an outdated, simplified model, where you pretend they’re birds and just plug in their wingspan and weight.
If you account for the fact that air molecules are a lot larger relative to their size than to a birds, so air acts more like water at that small scale, and they don’t just move their wings up and down but in a complicated movement that shapes the turbulence, it’s no surprise they can fly, and scientists know that.
I remember watching a video from a physicist who failed her pilot’s license exam because she explained that and the modern theories of how airplane flight works instead of the old wingspan, weight, speed, and air density over the wings model.
Needless to say, she took the test again, gave the answer they wanted, and the video was about her building a plane out of wood about a month after she finished the launch of her Mach 2.1 capable model rocket.
Well that sounds cool. Got a link?
Here’s a video she did of a 3d printed supersonic rocket. I think it’s the Mach 2 one, but I don’t exactly remember:
Wait I can PET BUMBLEBEES?!
Bumblebees are pretty gentle, and whereas I used to be extremely scared of bees (and especially bumblebees because of their size), I find them adorable to observe up-close now that I’ve gotten over my fear.
However, the question I would ask regarding petting is: why? When I pet a household dog or a cat, it’s ideally because I think it comforts them, and at worst (if they’re mildly annoyed and I don’t realize), it’s never going to harm them.
For the bee, though, it’s probably strictly uncomfortable for them to have a being 50,000 times their size come up and start putting pressure on them. (Bumblebees can distinguish noxious stimuli, but they do still respond somewhat to regular tactile stimulation; see p.3.)
Their wings and legs are fragile, and it’s not like they can’t be accidentally provoked into stinging you. If they’re just minding their own business, it’s really best to leave them alone, because at best you’re annoying/not comforting them, and at worst you’re physically harming them.
TL;DR: Bumblebees are really cool, but just treat them like you’d treat other wild animals that don’t want to be touched; that you can get so close to them and watch is already a blessing.
That’s a really well argued paragraph. But have you considered: why pet shaped if not for petting?
(Jokes aside though. Point taken. But there’s nothing you can say to keep me from talking to them in baby talk from now on when I’m out gardening amongst them. Who’s a big stripey boy? Yes you are, aren’t you? :))
bumbles
I let one crawl on my finger and it just chilled there for minutes :3
When I was in school they used to land on my glasses and then crawl between my glasses and my eyes. I changed deodorants and it stopped but like, have you ever wondered if you were cool enough to not get stung in the eye hole? I do not wonder that.
It was that old spice that tastes like lemonade what attracted the bees, if you wondered.
Dude stop drinking deodorant
mpo
What about wood bees? If I knock them out with smoke are they chill enough to pet? If I use good smoke?
You can (very, very carefully!) pet the top of their thorax when they’re not flying, such as when preoccupied with feeding at a flower, although as TheTechnician27 outlined, it’s probably not good for them. Better is if you can find one that’s struggling to fly (semi-common this time of year, when things are still warming up) and then you can warm the little guy in your hands if they’re cold or chauffeur them from flower to flower if they’re hungry. Often this will help them regain the strength to keep flying, but sometimes they never do; I assume in these cases they’re dying, but at least I gave them some hospice care. It’s very strange to deposit a struggling bee on a flower, watch it feed, and then see it wiggle its little feet in the air like it’s calling the magic carpet back for another lift.
Definitely, I boop them all the time in the spring when they are swarming the flowers.
They’re floofy!
I love bumblebees so much. Just saw a couple flying in 70km/h wind gusts today. So stupid. So graceful
will let you pet it without getting agitated
Wait, seriously?!
If you ever have chilly spring/fall mornings, you can often find one perched on a flower “sleeping in”. (Really their metabolisms just slow way down in the cold, and they’re waiting for the sun to hit.) You can get some tiny pets in for sure. It’s nice.
be gentle though, they’re just little guys
One landed on the hand of my sister and wasn’t bothered by her petting it.
But this is highly anecdotal.Don’t ever “catch” a bumblebee between your hands. It will sting/bite (idk what they do, someone said they bite but I’m not sure) and that hurts like hell! Did that one time as a kid thinking they can’t do anything and regretted it really quickly!
I was eating some chicken outside.
A yellow jacket buzzed around.
So I held a little teeny-tiny piece of it for it.
Things seem to be okay; but then I felt it.
Was it a sting or was it a bite?
Maybe it mistook my thumb for some of the chicken—chicken is often greasy.
It wasn’t really painful, but I decided it wore out it’s welcome, so I probably flicked it away.
I don’t think I ever saw it again.
At another time, a few came through my window.
So I put some syrup on a cap to see what will happen.
A few more flew in.
They drank it up—they sure seem to like syrup a lot.
I guess after they had their fill, the flew away—“buzzed off” if you will.
I love how this is formatted like a poem
Carpenter bees are so cool. I love them. They don’t ever dart at me either. Usually just other carpenter bees. My recollection is the males have white dots in their heads and don’t have stingers at all, and they’re the ones that typically guard the best (by hovering around).
Unintentionally pressed my elbow into a hive if red paper wasps.
STRAIGHT FUCKING FIRE 🔥🔥🔥. Don’t recommend it. 3\10.
You must’ve liked it at least a little bit to rate it 3/10. Admit it.
Lol. Gotta leave a little room down there for the “it can always get worse” section.
