Does anyone know anything about wasps?

Went to a party a few years ago. Let a wasp sip outta my drink. Tilted it so it could get at the beverage. Conversed with the little fella too. Had a fine time. Maybe you might try something similar.

At least you can eat the bunny. I'm afraid I usually go straight for the wasp spray. I've never been introduced to a European wasp, but our meat wasps are real pests, and build nests all over the place.

I rationalize it by saying they're bee competitors, and someone needs to help those little guys/gals out.

mccardey said:

You know what other wildlife I saw today? A baby bunny. In my vegie garden.

I don't see that ending well...

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I saw a bunny in a neighbours' garden the other day. Unfortunately, you're not allowed to discharge a firearm in rural residential areas. Also I don't have a firearm. So I glared at the bunny and made a note to add to the RabbitScan database.

If you live in the Northern hemisphere (which you don't), wasps tend to start showing up indoors in the fall because they're looking for a nice place to hibernate (or so I've been told; why don't they go back to their existing nest?)

Maybe you've got a few that camped over-winter in your house and are now waking up? Very nice of you to ferry them outside; I do that too, although it has less to do with empathy than with getting them away from me without a lot of violence they might take offense to.

It might be different if I was actually competent at the whole swatting-to-kill thing.

jjdebenedictis said:

If you live in the Northern hemisphere (which you don't), wasps tend to start showing up indoors in the fall because they're looking for a nice place to hibernate (or so I've been told; why don't they go back to their existing nest?)

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As far as the common European wasps, it's just the young queens who do this after leaving/being kicked out of the hive. Wasps go all Highlander if there's more than one grown queen in the hive.

So the new queens overwinter elsewhere and then start a new hive of their own.

You can tell the way the wasps entering indoors in fall looking for a nice cosy hibernation spot are generally larger than usual. Which I once could observe quite well when one of them crawled (loudly) under the door of my room in the middle of the night and landed on my bed just as I turned off the light. Good times.

Trust funds, Lilly Pulitzer prints, dry gin, repressed shame, artificial laughter, and men's belts dotted with whales?

Once Upon A Time: I was peeling a boat-load of apples the one day for canning and I had hundreds flying around me. They landed on me, on my hand, on the knife, on the apple I was working on. I never got stung. Batting at them will aggravate them, so I just let them lick the sticky apple juice off my hand while I continued to peel apples. I'm nice and make sure they don't get in the way if my knife Bees are good, they help pollinate.

As far as I know wasps never re-use nests. So at this last in the year, I'd leave the nest be. They'll be relocating soon. I know yellow jackets go under ground for the winter, but I'm not sure where wasps go. I know with yellow jackets, if they're under ground and their nest is close to your house or shed and you don't want them there, a good way to kill them off is dumping boiling hot water into the nest at night.

What I know about wasps:

The name is not wasp, it is jasper (what they're called around these here parts anyway).

They sting people

They seem to especially like cider

They make big nests

Um...

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That's about it.

Maybe this is why you have no cockroaches.