• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Wasps

RogerS

RogerS

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Having counted over 200 wasps in my workshop (either killed at my own hands or dying on their own) it was time to take action. I'd found one nest which I thought was the source but then discovered another one high up outside in the eaves.

Wasp destroyer foam only works if you can coat the nest - not possible in the eaves.

Wasp destroyer dusting powder only works if you can hold the container vertically and puff into the nest - not possible when hidden under the eaves.

So I wondered how much our council would charge - answer £55 - and then I remembered what they used when they came round a few years ago. A very long lance. So I Googled and found this.

wgg-0003-2T.jpg


Refillable. Reaches 3m. Works a treat. Bloody brilliant.
 
Nowhere near 200 wasps, but I have noticed that the little blighters have a fascination with my workshop. I was speculating whether they are attracted to the smell of the cut wood, don't they make their nests out of chewed up wood?

Terry.
 
They eat the wood to build their nests. Seem to have a penchant for oak timbered frames.
 
I had a wasps nest removed from my workshop at Stanbridge Earls years ago . They seem to chew wood dust , then re-gurgitate (?) to produce something like paper mache . Its worth looking closely at a nest to see how hard the little buggers have worked , layer upon layer of different colours according to what they have been chewing . Who'd be a wasp eh ?

Steve
 
Only 2 weeks hence I removed a football sized one from my loft. Henry Hoover did the job beautifully! As far as the wood they like to pulp, we have a swing seat that many moons ago was teak, now its the classic "outdoor silver" colour and they seem to spend half their lives landing on that and hoovering up little lines. If you ever see outdoor furniture with a lighter coloured strip about a cm long and 2 or 3 mm wide...that's the wasps. They seem to rasp off the surface coating and it leaves the lighter wood beneath. I think they find the flat surface of planed timber easier to go along and eat up. This swing seat is absolutely covered in little squiggly lines where they've been scoffing it for nest building. Amazing little things.
 
What's amazing is how good I am getting at taking them out in mid air with an 18" long piece of 2x1, can wallop them clean out of the workshop doors in most cases now :twisted: .

Terry.
 
Wizard9999":h51b3ykc said:
What's amazing is how good I am getting at taking them out in mid air with an 18" long piece of 2x1, can wallop them clean out of the workshop doors in most cases now :twisted: .

Terry.
Click to expand...
And that is so satisfying ...

They are alleged to eat greenfly but I've never seen them doing it.
 
Ah yes....the old "wooden" light sabre....very good. I've always favoured the handy badminton racket within arms reach myself :twisted:
 
I bought a battery powered electric zapper one the other day (looks like a squash racquet) - works really well.
We seem to be having a plague of the blighters at the moment.


Rod
 
yes it certainly appears to be a very good year for wasps. We have two in our garden, the one I referred to earlier which Henry ate in the loft and another inside my wood pile. Come the outside eating and they're just starting to get quite the nuisance factor. I feel a flame throwing session coming on! At my brothers this weekend he also had two nests in his garden...the little blighters were everywhere.
 
Woodbloke":3hub9y0f said:
If you're quick enough, you can suck 'em up with the 'shop vac as well - Rob
Click to expand...

I'd rather be certain than quick:

pipe2.jpg

pipe1.jpg

inside2.jpg


A nest of small yellow jackets set up shop next to my front lawn, and stung my son on Monday when he was mowing. Hit him 5 times. Got me once too. It rained yesterday, but today was dry and time for retaliation. I put a few inches of water with some dish soap in the shop vac, put the nozzle up to the hole, turned it on, and went inside to make dinner.

Result:
About a dozen dead bugs, and one mowed lawn.

Kirk
 
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