Nothing funnier than to see a surveyor with a full pouch of nails, bob, pencils, book, triangles, tape measure ect....upon having realized in the middle of pristine woods that he is standing near a yellow jacket nest....takes off running, yelling, swatting, and tools flying everywhere. If you are at the right distance away you don't see the bees just the wild and crazy surveyor running insanely throught the woods.
I can laugh at others because I was this guy once...somehow it is much funnier looking back in time or watching others, during the actual personal event...not so funny.
Once a hornet stung my eyelid and got stuck, I was running away trying to get it off my eye, when I ran dead a$$ into a tree and nearly knocked myself out, amusing to the other crew members but not me, my eye was so swollen it completely closed up.
That same critter will crawl into your soft drink can attracted to the sugar...if he hits you on the lip, you'll never forget. Been there, Done that! 🙁
That is why you should wear a Yellow Jacket warning bell...
AKA Spencer Logger
...to warn your fellow crewmen WHY you are running back down line...
😉
DDSM
LOL, I agree the little buggers will chase you and catch up if you stop too soon.
hey snoop,
what about the can of ether, two pounds of pyrodex and a flaming arrow for the yj's? i'm still laughing at that story
Kris
I can only think of one, and it's a mean one. I was staking a condominium complex for a client that wandered around behind us for hours every day, asking all kinds of questions and making suggestions that plain wouldn't work. We were NOT on an hourly contract and he was costing us time and money.
Early one morning we found a yellowjacket nest and to keep from stumbling into it again later I peeled off several feet of yellow flagging and threw it near the entrance to the nest. About an hour later the client shows up as usual and begins wandering around. "Hey what's this yellow flagging for? I don't see anything, let me kick around and see what's there. YOOOOOWWWWW!!!! Where'd all those yellowjackets come from? I'm OUTTA HERE!!!!"
He left us alone after that.
Andy
Kris
Hmmmmm.....That got me thinkin
A bucket full of yellow jackets. Another tool in the toolbox!
Neigbors being nosey..pull out Bucket o'jacks. Adjoiner following you around...yep, out comes Bucket o'jacks. Neighbor kids being annoying...get out the Bucket o'jacks.
I must have been standing on top of the nest while I drove the stake for them to have a chance to go up my legs. I think those buggers were already on me and holding on before I started running.
One stung me so many times in the same spot on the back of my arm that the skin in the center of the sting died like a spider bite. It took weeks before it finally healed into normal skin.
I've heard you guys talk aout those 'yellow jackets' for a while now, and wondered what they were. Well thankx to your pics I now know.
Round here we call them Wasps - in particular German Wasps.
They are slowly spreading through New Zealand. My Mother-in-law says that they were not around at all when she was a child, and now they are pretty common 🙁
We have a powder insecticide called 'Carbaryl' which is very effective against them. A teaspoon spread in the entrance gets the whole colony - they carry it inside themselves. But you have to be able to get close to get it in the entrance
Yup - I've been there.
I was locating the high water mark along an inlet with steep side slopes. The tide was out several hundred feet, with mud flats exposed. My compatriot was set up on the other side of the inlet in a good spot to see all the HWM we needed.
I went around a deadfall, and put my foot into a ledge-crack. Out the yellow jackets flew to end the one who destroyed their house.
It did occur to me to jump in the water, but since the tide was out, I was sure I would have gotten stuck in the flats, with the whole nest converging on me.
So I drop the rod, sprint up the hill, and at the same time get on the radio and say to my partner:
"GAH! Hornets!" Going (AHHH!) to the van. S**T!! Be right back..."
I make it to the top, get in the van, roll up the windows, and find three of them who had been in my clothes. It took 5 more minutes of van rocking fighting, punching and swearing to get em dead.
All this time, 2 painters are watching this unfold from across the street with the deadest of deadpan expressions on their faces. I knew they were dying laughing inside.
I finish up and roll down the windows to get some air. One of the painters asks "Hornets?", making an obvious effort still not to laugh. I reply yes.
Over the radio, my partner asks:
"Can you wave the rod?" I can't see you..."
They are so mean, vindicitive and down right bad azz, that even if you move to a different state, they will find you! I hate 'em! Too many stories, laced with lots of explitives to go into here on a family forum!
-JD-
Aren't they used to alleviate pain for arthritis?
I thought I saw something to that effect on a Science Channel some time ago. I know it was some type of stinging insect, thought it was a wasp or yellow jacket ...
Craig
Kris,
I had no idea. Sounds like that would work. I'm not much on finding them but if the chance arises (and I have the guts enough) I just may try it. So you have 7...dang. Bet that makes a good conversation piece when clients come by.
Now the other one you posted is a monster....not quite sure I have what it takes to keep that for a momento...:)
Aren't they used to alleviate pain for arthritis?
They sure are good for a laugh, reading everyone’s experiences, and recalling my own. Jp
Aren't they used to alleviate pain for arthritis?
My father in law raised honey bees. And yes, you can have a few sting ya and it does relieve the pain of arthritis.
Heck, in the shed he still has 25-30lbs of bees wax (pretty good for many more things than keeping a drawer running smooth) he made more on the bee's wax than the honey.
Aren't they used to alleviate pain for arthritis?
>Aren't they used to alleviate pain for arthritis?
honey bees work for this. my grandmother (memaw) swore by it. she would go out in the yard in the evening and walk around barefooted and get stung 2 or 3 times by the honey bees in the clover. of course that was back when we actually had native honey bees. i hardly ever see them around anymore.
Slowly approaching the nest in the cold pre-dawn darkness, holding a four foot lath out in front of me with a sandwich baggie filled with chain-saw gas dangling from the tip was when I realized yellow jackets had sent me around the bend.
My friend Andy was over to my left at the ready with another lath, the end of which was dripping gas. I reached my lath waaay out in front of me so the gas baggie was directly over the entrance to the ground nest. Andy torched a match and touched it to the gas-soaked end of his lath right as I dropped the baggie on the nest. Andy’s flaming lath cut an arc through the darkness until it hit sandwich baggie ground zero and the entire meadow was briefly lit up, the silence broken first by the dull “whoomp” of the gas igniting and then by our maniacal laughter. We were slope staking logging roads in the Ochoco mountains that summer and had been harassed by yellow jackets every minute of every day. We calculated that we ran across a nest every 500 feet. Every 10 stations we staked held the surprise of a nest somewhere nearby. Although our napalm strike on this one nest was a rare and inconsequential victory for us, the morale boost was priceless.
> I have a particular fear/hatred of yellow jackets. I never seem to spot them until after I've disturbed them. Gives me the heebie jeebies just looking at the pics.
ME TOO!!!Gives me goose bumps too!! I HATE THOSE LITTLE B!@#$%DS!!! :-@
As many years as I spent in the field in several different states, I have never run into a ground nest of any type of wasp or hornet. I have seen lots of yellowjackets paper nests under eaves, hornet nests in trees and multitudes of bee hives. I have never been chased more than 20 feet and never swarmed, but I have been stung. The last time was over 25 years ago by a bee. What is with you guys and pissing off the flying, stinging insects? I have more trouble with ants and I have never gotten nailed more than two times in a year.
