Cicada Killer Wasp Invasion! HELP!!! (1 Viewer)

[Zen Butler]

Hey, did the Killer Bees ever make their way up here? I've been waiting since I was like 10 years old.

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

Zen, here is all you need to know about "Killer" Africanized Honey Bees and their impact on Texas as well as other states:

http://honeybee.tamu.edu/africanized/index.html

The dangers of "Killer Bees" have obviously been exaggerated, but that does not mean one should go around poking sticks at their hives.

I think the last reported death from a Killer Bee attack in Texas was more than a year ago. In fact, far more people die from allergic reactions from an attack by regular honey bees than those who die from Killer Bees in regions where they both are known to habitat. Killer Bees tend to build their hives in very rural area, and thus have little cause to get aggravated. Their hives are also easily spotted due to their enormous sizes, thus locating and destroying those hives is easy to do which has also helped control Killer Bee populations.

 

[Blaine Skerry]

One of the advantages to living in the Canadian Maritimes (the middle of nowhere) is the complete lack of any major venomous creatures. Other than smaller wasps and bees, the only thing to dodge in the summertime are mosquitoes and black flies. Winter weather. . .now that's another story.:frowning:

 

[Michael Warner]

I would rather tangle with a horde of venomous snakes and spiders than face another black fly season in Canada. I used to spend every summer just north of the Soo Locks and my head and arms would be covered in scabs from the bites of those buggers. We would jump in the lake to escape them and they would land on our heads when we surfaced for air. I'm all itchy just thinking about it.

 

[Jason Kirkpatri]

This thread reminds me of what my brother and I used to do when we were younger and lived out in the country.

Every year, we could count on catching, with a glass and a playing card (slide the card under the glass), a bumblebee, a yellow jacket, a big-ass black and white hornet, and a not quite as big-ass yellow looking wasp thing.

Four catches, all in clear drinking glasses with a card under the glass to hold them in. Line up two glasses next to one another so that the cards are pressed against one another and remove the cards. One big "container" with two angry residents. While I'm doing this, my brother is doing the same with the other catches. Morbid, but interesting for us!

And when we were really, brave, and fast, all four in one glass at once and the fight was on!

Bumblebees seemed to go down fast. The bigger yellow wasp thingy always seemed to deliver some major whoop ass on the other "contestants". When the show was over, we'd tip the glass over (to let the victor out) and run like hell!

Memories. Don't even get me started on the forest behind our house and the "raining" caterpillars!

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

You know what's funny, last summer everyone was making a big deal about the emergeance of the annual Cicada's, the one's that come out every 20 years or something like that, and I remember being absolutely paralized with fear at this prospect as I hate BIG flying insects! Little tiny flying insects, cool, B-17 Bomber flying insects, not so much.

And indeed I heard reports of parts of the state (Delaware) that were just being pounded by hudreds of millions of these things, people being attacked, Cicada's causing car accidents because they were smacking into peoples windshields as they drove, people having to shovel thousands of stinky dead Cicada's off of their driveways, hell I even heard a report of a woman who claimed a whole gang of Cicada's swooped out of the sky, snatched her purse and flew away with it!

And of course, you had those "special" individuals who liked to cook them up and eat them like popcorn chicken. Hell, all that was missing was Orson Welles doing the narration and you'd swear it was War of the Worlds all over again!

All summer long I thought the invasion was at hand, like I was expecting to wake up one morning and see one of those enormous spaceships hovering over the city via Independance Day...but it never happened! I didn't lay eyes on a single solitary Cicada, except in pictures. From reading about them I discovered why...virtually everywhere I went over the course of the summer, the dirt had been disturbed in the insuing 20 years since the Cicada's last emerged.

Around our apartment building, the trees were planted about ten or so years ago so the soil was Cicada free and around my job, well, my job wasn't even there 7 years ago so that whole area had been ripped up.

I'm not complaining either, when I first heard about the impending June/July invasion on the news I was scared shitless because even though they are harmless, they are big, they are ugly and they are loud, and big, ugly, loud and me...don't mix. I mean I just wanted to have a nice peacful summer, I did not want to go outside and find myself involved in a miniature re-enactment of Pearl Harbor with me starring as the Battleship Arizona.

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

[c] [/c]

 

[Richard Travale]

Holy crap! I had no idea they were that big!!!

 

[Citizen87645]

Now I understand why he first used a tennis racket. Yeesh.

 

[Mary M S]

They are that big. I have them, (rarly) they make me nervous but we hold to a truce, just keep on doing what they do, - don't land on any of my body parts and I will not get out my racket. (if one landed I would NOT be happy but would just keep still and hope they were not in a investigative mood).
Once one zoomed in landing on a Cicada passing just in front of us. It was very Texican, exactly like a cowboy on the back of a broncing bull, the Cicada was very vocal about it....for a while.

I have been sitting on the back porch when one went by within a foot...its like getting a flyby from an RC plane.

I have 2 backyard fountains, Architectural shapes. One is now nicknamed The Bee Pillar, since a local group of these seem to have come to depend upon it. I go in to add water to it once a day in high summer and the honeybee's don't even seem to notice, I just move gently in the area, and they buzz complacently around me like fat minature puppy dogs. The other day I had a different experince when filling the fountain which had stopped. The sides of this pillar are normally wet and covered with algae and moss which the bees appear to eat but it had dried completly. I am walking up to it as usual when suddenly I realize that the Bee's are zooming around the square base in a concentrated zone; like highspeed planes around pylons in a race. THEY were NOT HAPPY their pillar dried out. I backed out, and waited till after dark to fill it.
Great pics!

 

[ChristopherG]

I am resurrecting this thread in the hopes that someone else has solved the same problem that I am experiencing. We added a deck to our house this past winter which runs the entire length of the rear wall and is on the second level above ground. The rear wall is south facing and is covered with vinyl siding...perfect condos for wasps. Of course the wasps have had the run of the place for several years and now we are trying to assert ownership. Anyone ever delat with this and if so, any tips? My research thus far has me going along these lines:

1- have exterminator come in and perform massive wasp extinction event

2- Plug every hole/gap/crack I can find (there is a shit load)

Any ideas? These are all paper wasps, red and yellow....

 

[MarkMel]

We get the Cicada Killer wasps every year, they don't bother us and the actually seem to fly around us to avoid us when we walk by. So we leave them alone.

The other type of wasps, I just get some wasp killer and spray some on them to get rid of them. No need to call a pro.

 

[Cees Alons]

Don't plug every hole you can find while the wasps are there. There are many more wasps inside than you may be able to conceive, and they will inevitably force their way out - possibly into your home.

There's an effective poison (but I don't know which one) that should be put in place at the "main entrance" if you can determine that one. Incoming wasps will take it inside before they die, and it will exterminate the whole colony, in the end.

During the winter (does it freeze where you're living?) the wasps will die even without the poison - except the queen. It's their fate. But the queen will most probably hibernate somewhere else, so the nest could very well be empty now: plug it now!


Cees

 

[ChristopherG]

Hi Cees,

It does freeze here - weird though, today was 95 degrees and 7 weeks ago there was 4 feet of snow on the ground...Dennis Quaid and Algore are right!!

Thanks for the info - pretty weird to think of killer wasps tunneling into your home while you sleep eh? I guess I'll be up for awhile.....

 

[Cees Alons]

The poison I was referring to is to be used as a powder, BTW.

We had a nest in a wall after a reconstruction last year, and that's how I got the information. In the end, I didn't use the poison, and after a serious winter, the nest seems totally gone, so I'm going to plug the entrance.
(Note that the queen has to leave to get mated again. But in fact, I was told, she leaves before the winter already, after all workers have died, which seems to be their natural fate.)


Cees