This Facebook thread was inspired by an article
about wasps and how ecologically useful and important they are, as this is the
time of year when they get a bit “radgy.”
9 August
2019 at 09.01
My
Grandma used to put an unwashed jamjar with an inch or so of water in the bottom
on the outside kitchen window sill. A
circle of greaseproof paper held by a rubber band as a lid, with a wasp sized
hole in. Wasps fly in, eat sugary stuff,
drown, suffering over. You can do the
same sort of thing with a Coke, or other sugary soft drink bottle (they have no
interest in diet drinks).
She also used
to say "If you kill a wasp six more come to its funeral"
Fester's
tip “If you have a wasp in the house, turn off all the lights and open the
window. The wasp will go towards the
sunlight.”
If you
happen to have a feather duster you could use that to waft the wasp towards the
window. If you’re lucky (and persistent)
you can get the wasp to grab hold of the duster and then shake it out of the
window. This also works with bees.
The good
thing about the feather duster method is you're a good three foot away from the
wasp (six if it's an extendable one)
The velux
in our kitchen roof is an excellent insect trap so we've become quite adept at escorting them out of the window.
Miss Doozer I'd possibly have more
sympathy if one hadn't landed on my leggings as I walked past its nest on my
way to the bus stop, then proceeded to repeatedly sting me through the
material. I smacked it with a folder, cursing it to high heaven, then realized
there was a group of school kids walking past who can now add "vicious stripy
f*&king b&stard f#!Ker" to their vocabulary.
Bentonbag The only time I was stung by a
wasp was through leggings, must be something about the material that attracts
and/or traps them. Vinegar is supposed to help calm wasp stings.
Miss Doozer More research is needed. Just
not on me.
Dr E We use scrumpy in plastic
bottles as wasp traps they love it. We tried using woodpecker cider and the
wasps ignored it.
POST
SCRIPT
Fester
has made me much more wasp friendly.
They had a nest near the back gate when I was pregnant with
Thunderthighs.
One morning eating
breakfast at the dining table, which looked out over the back garden, I noticed
wasps flying away from the nest carrying stuff.
“I
can understand them carrying food and stuff into the nest” I said to Fester
“But why are they carrying stuff away?”
“It’s
shit” he replied “they’re cleaning the nest.”
I
was quite impressed at this idea and decided the nest could stay as they were
causing no nuisance.
Until
Thunderthighs was a couple of weeks old and I was out hanging babygrows etc on
the whirligig washing line.
A wasp
landed on and got caught in my leggings and stung me in its effort to escape.
I could not risk this happening to toddler
Ferretfingers or baby Thunderthighs so went off to B&Q for poison.
That evening, scattering the powder around
the entrance to the nest so that they would carry it inside, I felt like a latter day Lucretia Borgia.
