Bees

[wg_bent]

Just a heads up here folks...

Today I was stacking some wood and noticed a larger than usual number of things buzzing near my head...Yeeeoooowwwww...I'm outta here!! Took off running across the lawn just in case.

Went back carefully and quietly and saw LOTS of yellow jackets all going directly to the same place under one of the long standing piles on the pallets. I go get the pump sprayer that just happened to have a heavy dose of Permethrin in it and look at the spot...Lots of Yellow Jackets going into the ground next to the pallet. I hate Yellow Jackets more than a 20" round of Elm!

Pump a good Quart of Permethrin into the hole, then go get the Wasp Foam spray and coat the whole nest with foam.

Haven't gone back yet, but this is the time of year when them critters get nasty PLEASE BE CAREFUL FOLKS!

 

[Robbie]

Warren, I recently ran into 2 separate nest in the ground, both loaded with yellow jackets.

I used a one gallon sprayer and liquid joy (1/2 cup) to one gallon of water, stir gently.

This mixture drops them instantly and they crawl about 1 inch and die.

I know this sounds funny, but I always wear camo shirt, pants and hat, never been stung and I stand right next to the holes and they fly in and around me to get to the hole, then I let them have it.

Yes, they are really protective over the little ones right now.

Robbie.

 

[BrotherBart]

Just wait until dark and spray them. Believe it or not they can't fly in the dark. Check it out.

 

[skypager]

Bees! Bees! Bees in the wood pile!
Bees everywhere!
They're huge and they're sting crazy!
Your firearms are useless against them!

-Variation of quote from Chris Farleys' Tommy Boy.

Sorry, couldn't help it. The thread just made that scene pop into my head.

 

[HarryBack]

hmmm....no bees in my pellets, tho I did have a bat once!

 

[drizler]

I usually just wait till dark. Then I take a can of handy dandy hornet spray and pile it up the hole. Everyone who makes it out just drops straight down, the rest as they say " are toast". One can lasts me quite a few years. Luckily around here they tend to get into overhans and barns where at least you can see and locate them. Its them in the ground bees that I can't deal with.

 

[BrotherBart]

Had a Mecco grill, one of those square jobbies, sit on the breezeway for two years without getting used. Walked out and opened the top one day and I got immediately covered with yellow jackets. Riddled from head to toe. Running through the yard like one of those guys in the movies on fire.

They had built a nest that covered the inside grill work top and bottom the whole size of the grill.

After I could get out of bed, I went out at night and unloaded two cans of hornet spray into the intake vent of that grill. The the next day, for good measure, I stuck my propane torch in the hole for a while.

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

I have my own grill service/repair bidness. I ALWAYS carry a can of raid with me to service a grill. More times then not, if a grill has been sitting, there are bees and wasps in it. For some reasont they must love the grease or something. I have been stung to many times to count.

 

[martel]

Warren, I recently ran into 2 separate nest in the ground, both loaded with yellow jackets.

I used a one gallon sprayer and liquid joy (1/2 cup) to one gallon of water, stir gently.

This mixture drops them instantly and they crawl about 1 inch and die.

I know this sounds funny, but I always wear camo shirt, pants and hat, never been stung and I stand right next to the holes and they fly in and around me to get to the hole, then I let them have it.

Yes, they are really protective over the little ones right now.

Robbie.

yes, wear camo and approach during the "New Moon Phase"

 

[Robbie]

Yes.......... and make sure you don't grin while your spraying them because they think your a tree (camo does this) and they know trees don't grin.

Robbie

 

[Michael6268]

Absolutey aweful this year in CT. I have yellow jackets everywhere. Mostly behind my shutters. I have soaked the shutters with bee/wasp killer and blasted them out with the hose all summer and a couple days later their back! I dont know if it was due to the exceptionally wet spring we had, but I can never remember so many bees! And those large "bumble bee's" are just down right nasty!

 

[Robbie]

I have a raccoon that comes for supper every night, he found a large wasp nest in on of our bird houses the other day..........how cute........you should have seen him reaching in through a 1 inch hole with both arms and pulling the wasp nest out through the hole and eating the larva..........with wasp all over him. :snake:

He got it though, left pieces of the nest laying all over the deck.


I hate all bees except honey bees.



Robbie

 

[heatxchanger]

I have noticed that many, many people incorrectly call yellow jackets "bees". I gess this is because both bees and yellow jackets have similar stripes. Note however that bees have black and gold stripes while yellow jackets have black and bright yellow stripes.

Yellow jackets are very aggressive animals and love to eat meat, sugar, you name it. Bees are not aggressive at all and prefer the nectar of flowers. I have been stung by yellow jackets many times but never ever by a bee.

A few years ago in september we were in southern Indiana and deciided to do a picnic at a large man-made resovoir/park there - sort of near the town of Marango and south of French Lick if if remember correctly. The yellow jackets were so aggressive they literally chased us inside our Ford Explorer right out of the park. If you opened the door 10 of them will fly inside looking for the food and we tried 2 different locations in the park a few miles apart. I never encountered anything like it before in my life.

 

[elkimmeg]

Try being a carpenter up a 30' ladded and suprise when you remove a trim board. It takes nerbs of steel not to react and know the sting is comming. Roofing also a favorite place. Yellow jackets hornets and white face wasp. If they leave me alone they live. If they buzz me too aften they will meet their maker Someone mentioned shutters yeah a nesting ground for sure wood shake shingles also.

Bats are no fun on a 40 ' ladder either. Remember yellow jackets like brush piles and old stumps and logs, always watch where you are walking in the woods. I eliminate all ground nest. I don't want my dogs to find them on my property. So far they are not a match for a John Deere Backhoe in a fully enclosed cab

 

[BrotherBart]

Yellow jackets are very aggressive animals and love to eat meat, sugar, you name it. Bees are not aggressive at all and prefer the nectar of flowers. I have been stung by yellow jackets many times but never ever by a bee.

Tell that to those damn bees that seem to love red oak so much. They will fight to the death to keep you away from a downed red oak and WILL sting you in the process.

Yeah I know they die after they lose the stinger. But they don't seem to realize that.

 

[drizler]

So what is the secret with the JOY? I know you mix it with water and hydrogen peroxide to instantly take the stink out of a skunk sprayed dog but never heard of that one. If I try it and end up with a whole squadron of those nastys nibbling my kester I will find you......................... Darn if Joy isn't almost as handy as Windex. Must cure about everything

 

[smirnov3]

So what is the secret with the JOY?

I'm going to venture a guess, and say that any liquid detergent will work. What the JOY! does is it acts as a surfactant.

Ok. I know a couple of you are going 'speak english, please.' right now, so let me back up & explain.

When you spray a bug with water, the water beads up on the bug because the bug's chittin is water repellent. like oil, or a good house paint.

What any soap does is it gets water to mix with stuff it normally can't, such as oil. That is (pretty much) the definition of 'surfactant'.

So what happens when you spray the bug with the soapy water is that the water spreads out and coats the bug evenly, getting into it's air intakes.

And the bug drowns.



Yes, I simplified a little, but the stuff I left out is really not relevent to the discussion.

 

[begreen]

I kept honey bees for many years. Got stung about once per year, usually because I was being careless or too aggressive. But in general, they are pretty passive creatures. Yes, as true bees, they can only sting once. Wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, etc. can sting lots of times. We welcome bees in the garden and work side by side for hours without them bothering us or they being bothered by us. Most bees are really beneficial, including bumblebees which we have by the thousands in our gardens. Leave them alone and they'll leave you alone.

This is not to say that there aren't aggressive varieties out there. I've received two major stingings twice in my life (over a dozen at once) but never by honeybees and that includes when I've gone and gathered honeybee swarms. The first time was by mud wasps. As a kid I stepped right on an underground nest entrance and they flew up both pant legs. My mom counted 18 stings by the time I got home. The last time occurred about 5 years ago. We had some tiny yellow jacket like wasps chewing through our wood and making a nest in our house. This was right above our bed so you would hear them chewing every morning. I decided to eradicate the nest from inside by spraying wasp spray into a small hole. With can in one hand I drilled a 1/4" hole through the dry wall. The moment I pulled out the bit, about a dozen little buggers streamed out of the hole and headed for my eyes. Before I could start spraying they had peppered my face with many stings. I slammed the door closed and went for my bee suit. Eventually I got the upper hand, but my face looked like someone punched my lights out for a couple days (and felt like it too).

But in spite of this I still like bees. They are fascinating creatures. Did you know that when they swarm they are almost totally passive? They gorge with honey to make the trip and seemed almost drugged. I've combed them into a box and as long as the queen was there they'd just follow along. So be kind to bees (honey, bumble, sweat, mason, orchard bees). We wouldn't have many of the fruits we eat without them. And fresh honey is so much better than store bought.

(broken link removed)

 

[BrotherBart]

The ones I deal with are carpenter bees. They build the nest in oak. The males will get right up in your face and fight. They don't have a stinger but the females do and it is potent. The problem is ya can't tell which one you are dealing with at the moment. They are very territorial about the nest and I am territorial about the oak trees so interesting fights occur almost every year.

One time one came after me and chased me all the way down the driveway. After running awhile I said to myself "Hold it just a minute!". I stopped abruptly, whipped off my western hat and held it out. The bee slammed into it and knocked himself silly.

I had to shake my head at the fact that I was running away from something an inch long.

 

[Robbie]

Anton Smirnov, you are correct, any liquid detergent seems to work, I've even used liquid hand soap. The key is to mix without making bubbles in your mix, and to mix it so it feels slick to touch, this will ensure a potent quick kill.

I use it on everything except honey bees. If you spray hornets, you have to account for a little extra time it seems to take for them to die. They still don't fly as long as you get them soaked. I adjust my sprayer so it has a good wide solid spray, not a mist, the solid spray coats them well and even helps to knock them right out of the air in flight.

I have killed thousands of yellow jackets, and hundreds of wasp over the years. You can spray anywhere on anything. The soap does not seem to hurt anything that I've sprayed it on, except the stinging critters.

For a quick kill trick, leave a old bottle of detergent outside ready for the kill, just leave an ounce or so in the bottle when it nears empty, then just squirt the contents a squirt at a time to kill wasp singles or doubles on nest around the house.

For a large wasp nest, 20 wasp or more, you might want to use a one gallon pump sprayer, it will get all 20 with one shot, they all hit the ground and crawl about 1 inch and fall over.

Robbie

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

I say get a flame thrower, i see them at surplus stores now and then.
Elk, when i was building my house, i was up 30' on scaffolding when they came out of the wall and stung the living crud out of me. Your right, its hard to keep calm and not make the fall.

 

[Eric Johnson]

I have my own grill service/repair bidness. I ALWAYS carry a can of raid with me to service a grill. More times then not, if a grill has been sitting, there are bees and wasps in it. For some reasont they must love the grease or something. I have been stung to many times to count.

Between you and Harryback, Ryan--is there anything you guys don't do?

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

I have my own grill service/repair bidness. I ALWAYS carry a can of raid with me to service a grill. More times then not, if a grill has been sitting, there are bees and wasps in it. For some reasont they must love the grease or something. I have been stung to many times to count.

Between you and Harryback, Ryan--is there anything you guys don't do?

Windows?

grills are a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
Im usually just converting grills, and installing them in big islands. Sometimes i have to get down and dirty and fix the ugly parts. Its the only way i realy survive. Its a small bidness, but it keeps me busy in the summertime.

 

[skypager]

grills are a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

I here that. Sometimes I wander if some of my summertime duties help make big profits for the latex glove industry.

 

[wg_bent]

I say get a flame thrower, i see them at surplus stores now and then.
Elk, when i was building my house, i was up 30' on scaffolding when they came out of the wall and stung the living crud out of me. Your right, its hard to keep calm and not make the fall.

Hmm...Good plan MSG...A flame thrower under 4 cords of wood sitting on pallets. With another 8 cords sitting within 2 feet. It sure would be spectacular "Uhhh well Mr Fire marshal....I was just killing some yellow jackets....Sorry I set Hyde Park on fire. Hell, the presidential home has had a couple fires anyway...It's an opportunity to modernize!"