Stinging Insect Rant

Fire ants seem to invade a person and then wait until they are all in place, then bite all at once.
 
Zeldman said:
Fire ants seem to invade a person and then wait until they are all in place, then bite all at once.
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Yes. They do exactly that. They release a pheromone to let each other know when it's time.
 
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I've got 18 bee hives. Saves me money on my property taxes. I'll take a few bee stings to save 3500 on my property taxes. Should have about 1800lbs or 150 gallons of honey to sell on top of that. Now yellow jackets, wasps, fire ants...they can all burn!
 
So I went out to check on the yellow jacket situation. Not wanting to repeat last Sunday's experience, I thought it best to go full PPE:

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I poked around some of the pine straw that I'd dropped (quickly) into my garden cart last Sunday, and sonofagun, I found the nest and there were still active insects, so I gave it a squirt from the insecticide can and got out of there. One of them followed me into the garage, but I was fairly well insect proofed and it gave up without much of an effort.

I thing what I'm going to do next is to go out at sunset and tape a piece of cardboard to the top of the cart so they can't escape, take the cart out into the woods, tie a string around one side of it, remove the tape, get away from it, and pull the cart over so they get dumped out, and come back the next morning and retrieve the cart. They're not very aggressive uniess you are messing with their nest, then they're pretty ferocious.
 
Tiger torch...although im pretty sure thats how Dahmer got started. Burning insects.
 
FormerHangie said:
I thing what I'm going to do next is to go out at sunset and tape a piece of cardboard to the top of the cart so they can't escape, take the cart out into the woods, tie a string around one side of it, remove the tape, get away from it, and pull the cart over so they get dumped out, and come back the next morning and retrieve the cart.
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Wait until AFTER dark when they're asleep. Dump a few ounces of gasoline in there, say about six, and cover tight. Don't light. The fumes will kill them. At least it does when they're in the ground..
 
Don't discount horse flies. Has anyone mentioned horse flies? They aren't in California. They are in the Midwest. Those things draw blood when they bite. As in, you actually bleed.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Don't discount horse flies. Has anyone mentioned horse flies? They aren't in California. They are in the Midwest. Those things draw blood when they bite. As in, you actually bleed.
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This is a Stinging Insect Rant. Please start a Biting Insect Rant and Horseflies will be welcomed :).
 
Racerx said:
I've got 18 bee hives. Saves me money on my property taxes. I'll take a few bee stings to save 3500 on my property taxes. Should have about 1800lbs or 150 gallons of honey to sell on top of that. Now yellow jackets, wasps, fire ants...they can all burn!
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What kind of honey? Just wild flower or some other varieties?
 
Bees range 3 miles. There's really no where close to me that would have monofloral honey due to that. Really depends what's flowing. The stuff I harvested last fall is goldenrod/aster. That's the only real nectar source in the fall. Weird stuff. Honey tastes good, but when they're drying down the nectar the hives smell like a sweaty gym bag.

I just pulled supers off today and will start extracting that. Gonna be some clover but nowhere near close to being monofloral. I've stopped trying to ask the bees what flower it came from.

Bee fact: the average honey bee will produce 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in their lifetime. I just pulled 130lbs off of just 1 hive. Out of the 18 hives I'll have about 1200 pounds of honey, roughly 100 gallons that got pulled today.
 
I put my nefarious plan into action. The nest is now out in the pipeline easement behind my house. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to retrieve my garden cart.

I still have much of the bale of pine straw still in its original position next to the house. I've been spraying it periodically. Next step is to start removing it carefully. Hopefully there's not another nest in this pile.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Don't discount horse flies. Has anyone mentioned horse flies? They aren't in California. They are in the Midwest. Those things draw blood when they bite. As in, you actually bleed.
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My parents just bought a house that has two horse stalls under the garage that the previous owners kept horses in. There are horse flies everywhere, so I guess there is a connection between them and horses.... who'd have thunk?

Any tricks to get rid of them?
 
Racerx said:
Bees range 3 miles. There's really no where close to me that would have monofloral honey due to that. Really depends what's flowing. The stuff I harvested last fall is goldenrod/aster. That's the only real nectar source in the fall. Weird stuff. Honey tastes good, but when they're drying down the nectar the hives smell like a sweaty gym bag.

I just pulled supers off today and will start extracting that. Gonna be some clover but nowhere near close to being monofloral. I've stopped trying to ask the bees what flower it came from.

Bee fact: the average honey bee will produce 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in their lifetime. I just pulled 130lbs off of just 1 hive. Out of the 18 hives I'll have about 1200 pounds of honey, roughly 100 gallons that got pulled today.
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Sunflower honey is easily obtained in Germany. Unfortunately not as easy here in the States. Love that stuff.
 
FormerHangie said:
So I went out to check on the yellow jacket situation. Not wanting to repeat last Sunday's experience, I thought it best to go full PPE:
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It doesn't have to be that hard. Just go after dark.
 
Groundpounder said:
My parents just bought a house that has two horse stalls under the garage that the previous owners kept horses in. There are horse flies everywhere, so I guess there is a connection between them and horses.... who'd have thunk?

Any tricks to get rid of them?
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I'm the wrong person to ask. I'm just the guy that has had chunks of flesh removed from his skin from them in the past. I'm no entomologist.
 
Re: Entomology - a year ago we had a slight bout of termites, caught in a remodel in the very early stages, before any real damage could be done. They were nipped in the bud. The bug guy asked if we had had recent ant problems, and I said no. Apparently ants and termites fight each other. So, basically, these days I'm giving ants a little more slack.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Re: Entomology - a y .
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