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Mar. 20th, 2007
So, I finally called someone up to deal with the bees in the attic. The exterminators I spoke to all were willing to poison things, but remove nothing...and then I found Jerry the Bee Guy. He was very nice and super informative, and told me that from the sound of things, what I had were German wasps, and they were all gone for the winter. I opted to pay him the $100 to come out anyways and remove the hives (ends up there were two) from the attic. Even without imminent threat, I felt this was well worth it, as I got rid of something that had been bugging me (no pun intended, honest!), and a very good education in the process.
It turns out that German Wasps can get into just about any house that has a hole bigger than 1/4 inch in it. The queens come out of hibernation (not in the house...somewhere in the ground, I think) in the spring, and swarm around, until they find a nice warm dark place to set up camp. Then they lay eggs to get some workers to get things started, and then more and more until they have a full blown hive. your house. Spraying from the outside only works if you get the right hole.
The drones go out and nibble at wooden things like fences, then come back and form their lovely, papery hive with the power of regurgitation. There is a tube connecting the hive to the outside, like a little runway. Bombing or spraying the nest is fairly useless, as there is not necessarily any entrance from inside
There is no guarantee that I won't get them again next year, but if I seal up some holes that may help, and getting rid of the old nest seriously limits their easy resources for building the next one (old ones are never reused.
My favorite thing is how when they excavate, they leave little columns to support the layers. Check it out!
It turns out that German Wasps can get into just about any house that has a hole bigger than 1/4 inch in it. The queens come out of hibernation (not in the house...somewhere in the ground, I think) in the spring, and swarm around, until they find a nice warm dark place to set up camp. Then they lay eggs to get some workers to get things started, and then more and more until they have a full blown hive. your house. Spraying from the outside only works if you get the right hole.
The drones go out and nibble at wooden things like fences, then come back and form their lovely, papery hive with the power of regurgitation. There is a tube connecting the hive to the outside, like a little runway. Bombing or spraying the nest is fairly useless, as there is not necessarily any entrance from inside
There is no guarantee that I won't get them again next year, but if I seal up some holes that may help, and getting rid of the old nest seriously limits their easy resources for building the next one (old ones are never reused.
My favorite thing is how when they excavate, they leave little columns to support the layers. Check it out!
I love the Grand Canyon, but...
Mar. 20th, 2007 09:38 pm...the very idea of this thing both scares me, and revolts me a bit. Here you have one of the most perfect, beautiful places on earth, and now it has some weird walkway sticking out over it, so people can pee their pants looking down...at least that is what I imagine my reaction being...check out this graph!
