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Wasp’s nest in compost bin - HELP!

My kind older sister told me when I was young that if a bee or wasp stung you on the neck, you'd die within seconds. I naively believed her, and used to spend the late summer with my hands covering my neck. To add to the summer trauma, she also told me that if I was wearing anything metal in a thunderstorm, I would almost certainly be struck by lightning. Given that the only metal I wore was in the zip of my trousers/shorts, I was terrified by even the slightest rumble of thunder.

I think I've only once been stung by a wasp, on the hand, and it was only slightly more painful than a nettle sting. So far, I've managed to avoid lightning strikes.

I`d be inclined to avoid your sister.
 
Wasp stings are a pain. They itch for days. Bees sting more at the time and you (or at least I) get involuntary muscle spasms in the area, but after an hour or so it stops.
 
Remember 1982 snorkelling off Swanage with Barbara Windor Brian Blessed and a Dalek and Brian got stung by a jellyfish, how he roared then Barbara stood on a whelk . Dalek was bent over double laughing, happy days.
 
I’ve had two wasp stings in my life.

First time in my 20s, on my thigh, which while annoyingly painful I just shook off.

The second time in my 50s – mowing a rough paddock in rural East Kent with a petrol mower - a wasp flew out of a hole in the ground, headed straight for me, and stung my arm. Painful, but that was all, on the day. However, first thing next morning the arm was stiff and noticeably swollen. Within an hour the swelling was visibly significantly increasing; I watched it expanding(!) as I was on the phone to NHS Direct (much missed predecessor to the outsourced call handling 111). When the swelling stopped, the whole length of my arm and hand was puffed up more than twice normal size. People at work when they saw it were shocked and it took a couple of days to return to normal. I was advised by NHS Direct to take antihistamine tablets and that having had one such reaction to a sting, the next time could be more severe, so always carry some tablets as a precaution. I was taken aback that I could experience such a reaction out of nowhere, not being prone to such things. To my shame, keeping tablets with me lapsed after a couple of years, but fortunately I’ve not been stung since. With it coming back to mind I ought to buy a pack.

Endpoint, while I’d tend to be in the live and let live camp, if I had a wasp nest close to the house, I’m not sure. Accepted that I wasn’t ‘leaving them alone’ using a petrol mower over what must have been a nest, but I didn’t know that, and mowing that patch was a regular thing for the few years we were there. One wouldn’t necessarily know what actions might be likely to disturb a nest close by, unwittingly provoking an attack response from its occupants.
 
I’ve never found wasps or hornets to be aggressive, unless they feel threatened perhaps.
But inside a home with small kids around… they have to go (possibly just out if you can).
I’ve been accidentally stung by hornets or wasps once in a while but not being allergic all went well.
 
We have lots of wasps here: mostly paper wasps (polistes dominula, I think, with long trailing hind legs). A bit less elegant than vespula germanica, they just go about their business and avoid us. There is a regular rotation of worker wasps to any source of water in the garden: they seem to need a lot of water (apparently this is to build the paper hive and cool it down when it gets hot in summer). I'd always wondered where the nest was, until the tilers doing a bit of maintenance on the living room roof last year found it under a tile. After much swearing and spraying, the nest was removed. The paper wasps are back this year, and we leave them alone. In 4 years of close proximity, never been stung or even attacked.

We occasionally get a few hornets (vespa crabro), large things, also no problem. We don't see too many of the Asian hornets (vespa velutina), which are an invasive species around here - we try to swat the isolated ones we see. There are lots of carpenter bees (xylocopa violacea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylocopa_violacea#/media/File:European_violet_carpenter_bee.jpg) that are huge, very loud and very beautiful, with a slight mauve sheen to the body and iridescent wings. One of them developed an affection for the wall-mounted Gardena hose reel in the garden, which has screw holes just the right size for xylocopa to nestle in. They can drill impeccable 8mm holes in the hardest wood, according to one grumpy neighbour who was upset with the way they had destroyed one of her windows, but we haven't seen any damage - they must be using her windows exclusively, or trees somewhere else.
 
What a lovely sister.
I was worse - I persuaded my younger brother to hit a wasps' nest with a big stick. The results were predictable but fortunately a big lad picked up my brother and ran him away from the nest.
 
I see another wasp nest thread so may as well close the circle on this one.

turns out they weren’t wasps at all but honey bees. Left them there until about 2 weeks ago when Mrs Sloop did some reading about them and apparently the advice is to get a bee keeper to take them away as this is the best way to protect them from a predatory mite.
The bee man said we had about 20,000 bees in the compost bin and should have phoned him earlier !





.sjb
 


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