Idk if it’s a species difference, but European yellow jacket wasps are pretty fucking chill. I’ve only been or seen someone get stung if they accidentally squish/step on them.
On the other hand they’re soooo persistent about stealing my food and bait. Like no, you can’t steal meat from my fork, fuck off. gets slapped, and comes back with 5 more sisters to bully me out of my lunch. It’s especially bad in late summer and so we have to eat indoors because of them.
Hornets can go fuck themselves though and I try to kill them on sight if they’re around the house.
Bee sting because they’re protecting themselve or the colony, wasp sting because they’re assholes
I’m a gardener and every time someone approaches my door to solicit pest management, I ask if it will kill the wasps and spiders. Every single time they share an excited yes, I get to tell them that I don’t kill my gardening coworkers.
Wasps and spiders eat the bugs that eat my crops. Pesticides also greatly increase your risk of health issues. No thank you.
Once I listened to a pest control guy and he said “I bet you’ve noticed a lot of wolf spiders in your yard”, to which I agreed.
He told me that their pest control dumps a shit load of pest control spray that should keep them away for a while. I asked, “but isn’t that where they live? Outside?”
He didn’t seem to understand how someone could belive that the spiders should be allowed to live outside.
Love that reply. Father of a friend paves every green spot in his property with stone floorings step by step for years now and sprays ant poison everywhere. He’s really really pissed about them ants minding their own business (like… just normal ants, not even fire ants or smth).
My response is always a “the fucking audacity of those ants. Building their colony just right there in the ground outside! Don’t they know this is your property?!”
… My comments on this topic are generally not very well received.
Paper Wasps ✔️ Yellowjackets ❌
A paper wasp keeps trying to make a nest in my doorway and we look at each other every time I open the door. Since they’re not aggressive they don’t do anything unless you actively are messing with them (and sometimes even then they don’t attack!)
Anyways, it flies away and I remove the beginnings of the nest every time. Then it comes back overnight and makes another one in the exact same spot. It’s a little game I play with the wasp at this point
Paper wasps are such bros! A month or two ago I stuck my hand into one of their nests inadvertantly, was greeted with what felt like electrical shocks, and my hand didn’t swell or even hurt after a minute or two.
I will always come to paper wasps’, or wasps in general, defense. I’m sure yellow jackets play an important ecological niche too, but I haven’t run into 'em enough to have an opinion on their temperament.
Yellow jackets aren’t aggressive, they’re just annoying because they like the same foods we do and are super persistent about it. They’re like panhandlers who won’t give up: Got any spare change? No. Are you sure? Yes. But do you have any? No. But do you?
When the Interspecies Olympics finally get organized you’ll both be ready!
My dog got attacked by a colony of yellowjackets for having the audacity to go near their nest that was just on the other side of our fence line. He ended up in the ER for anaphylaxis. The neighbor’s dogs got stung too, though they weren’t allergic. Those little cunts can all die in a fire.
Paper wasps I hate less, I just wish they’d stop trying to make nests on the eaves of my house. They’re chill, but I just want them to find somewhere else to call home.
There are 3D models available for paper wasp nests, that can stop them from latching to your house. Wasps are HIGHLY territorial, and will not start a new colony nearby to another nest.
I left an old one up by my garage, and despite it being empty, no wasps come remotely close to my the front of my house anymore.
For the record, soap kills insects. Get a good spray bottle, put a lot of soap in it, more than recommended online for me.
I genocided a ground wasp nest I stepped on some time back with the soap water, they don’t make the connection between me and getting sprayed. I spent like three hours spraying countless wasps.
They jive around when sprayed, then maybe 12 seconds they go on their back convulsing, still within a minute.
I appreciate what wasps do for the environment, but I’m fairly sure that I’m genuinely somewhat phobic of them, presumably stemming from getting stung by one when I was like 3 or 4. It’s become more manageable to an extent as I’ve gotten older, but to this day, seeing or especially hearing a wasp nearby still stirs a bit of fight-or-flight reflex in me.
I don’t go out of my way to kill them unless they’re actively nesting on my house or something, but I do wish them a very “go do your thing, just far away from me personally.”
The only time I’ve been stung by a bee is when I was little and walking outside bare foot and stepped on one. I’ve been stung by wasps for things like being outside or being inside when a wasp got in the house.
I’ve gotten stung by a dying wasp who crawled to my mousepad and I unknowingly placed my hand on it. Fuck those assholes
Ha, the 1st time I was “stung” by a bee as a kid, I was sitting poolside and smashed my hand onto one.
I get stung all the time. I mean not every year but maybe every other, but I work outside. If wasps nests are so sacrosanct and important, why do some species leave them laying on the ground?
Fuck Ground wasps. All stinging wasps are like mean drunks when it gets hot outside. Obviously there are thousands of other species, few of which sting.
Wasps are the insect tigers, dangerous but worthy of love ❤️
I’m pretty sure humans have liked bees and disliked wasps for a lot longer than most of us even knew there were sharks or dolphins.
You can avoid wasp stings in the exact same way as bee stings; not being a fucking idiot
That goes both ways. Wasps like to fuck around and find out.
Yeah, one came into my house the other day. Big mistake. Buddy got split in half by my bug a salt.
The people who write this stuff live in cities. Synurbizated wasps.
This is clearly wasp propaganda because wasps are not cool. They will actually attack you for no reason and then fly away thus indicating they could have always flown away.
Meanwhile bees completely ignore you.
I’ve been stung by a bee exactly twice in my life. Both unfortunate accidents where the bee and I collided.
I have long since lost count of how many times I have been stung by wasps just for being near them.
Bees don’t make nests above my door, or under my patio awning. Or generally everywhere outside I need to be. Fuck them wasps.
Ha, same for bee stings. Once on I put my hand into one the ground, once swung my hand and hit one mid air that was just flying and didn’t expect me to move the way I did. Bees are alright.
A bee has never aggressively investigated my lunch and refused to fuck off when I’m eating outside.
Like I’d happily spare some if they’d just get the fuck out of my face
Decoy plate: put a lil food for ‘em a distance away from ya. Blew my mind when I first saw someone do that
A few months back I was visiting my retired parents, and I wanted to break the routine a bit and decided to sit at a lakeside table we never used because it was redundant.
As I walked up to the table and sat my stuff down, I heard a “FWOMP” followed by a sound I can only describe as “chitinous rubbing”. I slowly checked my surroundings until I noticed an almost basketball sized mass of wasps waking up that had fallen with part of a hive underneath the table. In a moment of extreme calculation I decided the only one of six things on the table worth risking stings for was the tablet, and I sprinted for the first time in years to get away.
So, I guess thanks to the wasps for the fun new core memory.
bro you need to sprint more
Yeah, consider doing it like me: I sprint for the train every day!
