A few days ago, bits of what looked like a wasp fell out of our bathroom extractor fan - it sounded like it had been rattling around in there for a couple of hours. The fan is sealed to the bathroom ceiling and via the flexible poly tube to the outside wall, I would've thought.
I was in the loft tonight and was confronted by the most enormous wasp-looking thing I've ever seen. Queen? Hornet?
I found an aerosol of ant killer and gave it a good going over (I couldn't find any fly/wasp spray). The thing flew through the cloud several times.
So what do you lot think I've got, have I killed it and if not what do you suggest I do next?
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Could be any of the above - if you find it dead do send a pic in!
My dad was once attacked by what he thought was a wasp and he swatted it and trapped it in a glass - it was huge, about 2 inches long and made a standard wasp look rather girlie. A nature freak teacher at my school identified it as a giant wood wasp. Never seen one since.
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Queen wasps emerged from hibernation around middle of April and star looking around for a suitable nest site.! Only queens survive the winter so no need to worry about a swarm of workers seeking revenge
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It was a queen coming out of hibernation, they've been doing this for a few weeks now. You have in all probability killed it. If it had started to nest, it will have been feeding perhaps half a dozen wasp babies, & it'll be curtains for them, too. You should be OK.
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Intresting - I've found three very sleepy wasps (or they could be bees, just ordinary size) crawling around the house today/
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you dont know the difference btween a wasp and bee?
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I was awakened from the arms of Morpheus a couple of weeks ago by buzzing.. There were two big wasps trying to get out between the window and the curtain. Both fairly lively until sent to meet their maker by a rolled up copy of March's ' Cheese Angler ' magazine.
Ted
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>> you dont know the difference btween a wasp and bee?
>>
A bee is reluctant to sting, a wasp not so ?
Last week I was given a little tip from a beekeeper. If you are stung by a bee, do not attempt to pull out the sting ( that will cause more venom to be injected) but scrape off the sting with something like a credit card.
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>> Last week I was given a little tip from a beekeeper. If you are stung
>> by a bee do not attempt to pull out the sting ( that will cause
>> more venom to be injected) but scrape off the sting with something like a credit
>> card.
>>
If you have invested in an Aspivenin thingy it's far and away the best means of dealing with lots of stings and bites. It's a pre-primed pump that applies a vacuum to the sting area and sucks the poison out, and the sting too if you're lucky. No chemicals and pretty quick relief. I probably get more than my share of stings and bites.
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>> >> you dont know the difference btween a wasp and bee?
>> >>
>> A bee is reluctant to sting a wasp not so ?
How about a wasp is yellow and blacks hoops and a bee isnt.
( i know I know some are not but they are rare and still dont look anything like britsh bees)
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 26 Apr 10 at 09:13
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>> what do you suggest I do next?
>>
Puff insecticide powder liberally on the outside of the extractor grille. Keep any eye open for the critters getting into the loft somewhere else and treat their entrance point similarly.
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Wasps won't nest near anywhere near another nest or what they 'think' is another nest. You can buy these fake nests and hang them up. I have one on the back garden and didn't see many wasps last year at all. The year before there were loads of them. Going to get one for the front and maybe another in the loft as there is a nest up there at the moment....
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Wasps won't nest near anywhere near another nest or what they 'think' is another nest.
That maybe true but I doubt very much that wasps identify other nests by vision. More likely their acute sense of smell which is after all how they identify food sources.
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My instinct is always to leave natural things alone unless you really can't tolerate them. Wasps do a lot of good in feeding on garden pests and are usually only a problem when their nest is near human activity. I ignore nests in the loft space, as usually the entrance/exit is straight outside and the wasps don't actually fly around in the house.
Last year I destroyed a nest whose entrance was near the front door, where, even though we might have managed to ignore the wasps, there was a H & S issue with visitors, postal deliveries etc.
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Rootling around in the loft I found this:
tinyurl.com/38v2lq9
It seemed much bigger when it was buzzing around my head!
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So what you're saying is yours is bigger than mine? ;>)
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I remember last year, I had to bat the wasps from the air with a golf club as they were carrying off the family dog back to the nest.
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just over 1cm long!!!! thats not a Wasp! it`s a Wisp!!
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They always look pathetically small once they're dead, don't they? But straighten that one out and it would be more like 22mm, which is a fair size for a queen.
My creepy wasp story is from a few years ago, when we'd been finding the occasional small, dead wasp in our bathroom over a couple of weeks. I'd thought nothing of it until I was in the shower one morning and looked up to see the silhouettes of about 20 very not-dead wasps on the other side of the curtain.
I have no recollection of how I got out of that situation but we found out that the wasps had built their nest in the space between the ceiling and the flat roof of the bathroom. Then, when they got tired of coming and going through a gap in the timbers, they gnawed through the plasterboard ceiling and came to join me inside.
That nest got the powder treatment but, as others have said, it's only necessary where the nest is in a trafficked part of the house.
I'm very excited that my new garden is visited by hornets. They nest in old trees, of which there are plenty just across the road. They're larger than even a queen Vespula wasp, orange-brown rather than yellow, and they don't so much buzz as rumble. They climb to rooftop height to fly back to the woods and you can still see them clearly from the ground. And, unlike their little yellow cousins, they take no notice of us humans, so they're entirely welcome.
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Yes, living in woodland as we do we have hornets around - frelons in French. As you say they don't take much notice of humans and are rarely aggressive so they are interesting to watch and hear. If we are sitting outside in the evening the approach of one or two is a bit like the Luftwaffe.
I think most people in England who think they have seen a queen wasp have probably come across a hornet. Apart from the colour, the main difference is that hornets have much longer and 'fluffier' antennae.
They are such impressive creatures that I always feel guilty if I kill one after coming across it in the house, because you can't have them around without knowing where they are.
They take a bit of squashing, too...
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5/6 yrs ago i was phoned at work by SWMBO - a wasp's nest.
Getting home a few hours later i looked in the loft and let the trap door down sharply.
Phoned a pest controller - £40+VAT
A week later I went up in the loft and took the nest down - it was so large it would not fit in a black plastic bin bag - it just got down from the loft hatch in 2 pieces...........there were another 3/4 in the loft - grapefruit size, tennis ball sized. Hoovering the dead wasps from the loft floor filled the vacuum cleaner at least 2 x.
Fortunately no repeat, fingers crossed.
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These are pretty impressive. The Asian Giant Hornet. Apparently quite a few people die every year from their sting.
media.photobucket.com/image/asian%20giant%20hornet/amour217/AsianGiantHornet.jpg?o=4
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>> These are pretty impressive. The Asian Giant Hornet. Apparently quite a few people
>> die every year from their sting.
In the UK, a hornet sting is about the same as that of a wasp. People occasionally die of wasp stings here.
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>> I think most people in England who think they have seen a queen wasp have
>> probably come across a hornet.
Queen wasps abound in the Springtime, and later in Autumn. If you leave your window open, especially upstairs on a south-facing wall on a sunny day, you are likely to have one come in. Hornets are far, far less common.
>> apart from the colour, the main difference is that hornets have much longer and
>> 'fluffier' antennae.
They're also "slower", their "buzz" is lower and more clackety, and they're disinterested in people, generally.
>> They are such impressive creatures that I always feel guilty if I kill one after
>> coming across it in the house
Hornets are a protected species in the UK. Try and get the thing outside intact if you can.
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I'm not in the UK. And I usually do try and shoo them out.
In France the standard response is 'kill, kill, kill'.
And eat, usually, but not in this case.
We have the odd grass snake in the garden sometimes but I daren't mention it to my neighbours. I don't have any problem with them but they would organise a lynch mob (for the snakes, not me; I hope).
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You really have got a soft spot Mike, and it's so nice to find in a man:)
Pat
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I'd put the confusion between hornets and queen wasps the other way round, Mike. The first few sunny days in April bring dozens of queens out of their winter hiding places, often looking quite brown and dusty depending on where they've been. People who haven't seen a wasp since their last picnic in September are surprised by their size and wrongly think they must be hornets.
Until we moved here, I'm pretty sure I'd seen hornets only in France. Our regular gîte there has woods on three sides that house lots of creatures we don't see at home. The hornets can be entertaining in August when they feed on the rotting grapes on the vines in the garden, get drunk, fall over and start fighting on the ground.
Does your part of France get my favourite insect, the amazingly basso profundo black and purple carpenter bee? Now that's a seriously impressive creature.
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Is anyone else suffering a plague of cockchafer beetles? Had loads of these huge beetles flying around in the past few days recently and my lawn has lot of yellow patches which I think are caused by the cockchafer grubs destroying the roots.
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Known as "maybugs", we usually get loads flying round our trees at dusk. Not seen any this year yet. I was just thinking the other day, where are the maybugs this year?
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Is that what was plastered over the front of our cars a few weeks ago?
What happened to those bugs, did we kill them all? Cars don't seem to be sporting as many.
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>> Is anyone else suffering a plague of cockchafer beetles?
There have been a few about in the last week or three.
>> my lawn has lot of yellow patches which I think are caused by the cockchafer grubs
>> destroying the roots.
They don't normally cause significant damage. Could be various things. Could be a bitch idddilgn on it.
Last edited by: Webmaster on Thu 24 Jun 10 at 10:29
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>> Is anyone else suffering a plague of cockchafer beetles?
I'm pleased I'm not. They sound as if they're very uncomfortable things to have about your person!
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>> >> Is anyone else suffering a plague of cockchafer beetles?
Not here in't City but I met one a couple of weeks ago. I can't remember whether I posted here about it.
Stepped out of the caravan to go to bed in the awning and something big hit me one the side of the head. Got me head down and later something touched my elbow, switched the light on and this monster beetle was crawling up the sleeping bag.
Dispatched it with a size 9 Clark's brown brogue, ( as befits an English gentleman ) leaving me to worry about where the rest of it's family was !
Googled it at home, was a Maybug or Cockchafer......Harmless.
Heaven knows what it would be chafing if it had got into my sleeping bag !
Ted
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Arr. I did not know you were over there. Haw hee haw.
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We get quite a few of them in our neck of the woods. Apart from their size, the most remarkable thing about May bugs is their truly woeful flying skill. They have an annoying habit of flying into the French door glass at dusk. Sounds like someone is throwing stones. They are pretty evil looking things, although apparently they are quite harmless.
At our last place, they used to come down the chimney and emerge from under the gas fire in the lounge for a few days every May where they'd start flying around the room crashing into things. When they buzz past your ear it sounds like a light aircraft!
Never could work out why this used to happen.
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>> At our last place, they used to come down the chimney and emerge from under
>> the gas fire in the lounge for a few days every May where they'd start
>> flying around the room crashing into things. When they buzz past your ear it sounds
>> like a light aircraft!
Yes, they used to come down our chimney at our previous house. They would emerge in a mini cloud of soot, very black and to much blundering about.
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If they can't fly very well they can be excused on the grounds of inexperience. The cockchafer is one of those insects for which the adult stage is merely the larva's way of making another larva. They live underground for three years, and the 'plague' phenomenon comes about because emerging all at once is the only way the short-lived adults have a reasonable chance of finding a mate in time.
The extreme example is the mayfly, which lives in the water as a predatory nymph for two years or more, then emerges as an adult with no working mouthparts that lives only about 24 hours. Attenborough made an extraordinary Life in the Undergrowth film about a river in Hungary (I think) where millions of adult mayflies emerge on the same day to mate, lay eggs and die.
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>> (Cockchafer beetles) They are pretty evil looking things, although apparently
>> they are quite harmless.
They are fascinating and beautiful insects. When you next see one, examine it closely. It can't hurt you.
Their fully-developed larvae ar repulsive, though. They take a couple of years to fully develop.
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>> >>
>>
>> Their fully-developed larvae are repulsive, though. They take a couple of years to fully develop.
>>
Children?
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Have taken some of the turf up and found a fair few of these beasties. Damage to lawn mad worse by birds looking for them!
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one wonders what key cog in natures machine these things fullfill.
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"wonders what key cog in natures machine these things fullfill."
The Bishop of Berne had the same concerns
An infestation of cockchafer larvae endangering the stores in Berne, Switzerland, in 1478 received a summons to “appear before the bishop in order to tell their story”. The Bishop later said he’d “heard the vicious and abominable answer” of the cockchafers, who hadn’t appeared.
medievalhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/medieval_animal_trials
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all part of the criminal underground:
The earliest documented animal prosecution took place in the Aosta Valley, Italy, in 824CE when a group of moles were excommunicated for ruining fields
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consdering they are gods creatures, animals get a lot of religeous persecution.
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>> consdering they are gods creatures,
Tortuous pun alert. Sorry.
In that case all God's creatures, got rid 'em.
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Interesting, how many, as far as you can estimate, per unit area? It sounds as though your lawn is especially suitable!
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Difficult to say since I ony remove about 6 square yard of turf. Found about half dozen grubs which chopped with the spade.
Grass is near a large oak tree. Other side of the fence is a large area of grass (sports ground).
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A surprise visitor to a family barbecue (not literally, thankfully) at the in-laws recently was a fully grown male stag beetle. That is a very impressive looking creature. I wasn't brave enough to touch it, and unfortunately didn't have a camera to hand, but with mandibles, it was about the length of my index finger. I actually mistook it for one of the kids toys until it moved! :-)
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"A surprise visitor to a family barbecue"
Did it taste like chicken?
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Hard to cook correctly, they explode messily if done too fast
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Did you see it fly? It's an amazing sight - they fly vertically, a bit like an autogyro. They can't keep it up for long though. We used to see quite a few ('lucane' in French) of an evening when there were fallen trees nearby. They'd circle the patio light very noisily once or twice then fall with a hell of a clonk onto the table below. Very disconcerting. My daughter-in-law was here a few years ago and had one land on her plate. Without hesitating, she picked it up and said, oooohh, look at that...
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Our French insect book also calls them cerfs volants - flying stags - and France is the only place I've seen them. They came out in numbers in the evenings during our hols there this time last year, so much so that on the lane that brought us back from our evening bike ride we had to steer carefully to avoid the pairs of males wrestling for first dibs on the nearest female.
As Mike says, in flight they truly look like nothing else on earth.
Probably the only more impressive beetle I've seen was a female great diving beetle we found on the drive of another gîte in about 2005. That was about the length of my thumb, the colour of a green olive and sufficiently far from water to make us wonder if it had been scooped up by a bird but managed to wriggle free.
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I was reminded of this thread yesterday. Wet Saturday, no cricket, so I earned (back) a few domestic credits by laying some boards in our loft. 9yo son was helping. We were interrupted a couple of times by worker hornets, which son very adeptly caught in a jam jar and escorted outside. Not sure why the beasts were in there; there's no sign of a nest so it could be that they'd just found their way in through air bricks. Impressive creatures, though, and less bothersome in a confined space than a yellow wasp would be.
And Mrs Beest is very pleased with the boarded loft.
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>> And Mrs Beest is very pleased with the boarded loft.
Have you giver her a bed and toilet up there as well?
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...stag beetles flying...
I've seen stag beetles fly a few times as a child.
On a couple of occasions we used them to practice our cricket hook shots.
Children do things like that.
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I think she may be intending it for me, 0, next time I'm in disgrace for preferring cricket to home improvement. The boards and the extra insulation will keep my protests from disturbing the rest of the house.
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Wasp? in loft - Stuu
