Good news: You win the internet for today.
Bad news: You owe me a new keyboard.
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Apologies for it being the Daily Express but this is a good article. It is not so much that (as perhaps you may have been implying) they are intoxicated on fermented fruit but the ‘catered’ source of sugar they get earlier in the year has dried up so they become more aggressive as hunger sets in.
But the article concludes with the an important reminder:
Dr Sumner insisted “they are not out to get you” and are in fact a crucial part of nature.
She said: “They perform essential ecosystem services for our natural world and our agricultural one. A world without wasps would mean your tomato plants would be tormented with aphids, and your lettuces riddled with caterpillars: wasps help control the populations of these pests.”
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I was pleased to hear that, while Sumner gave an unexpected boost to the utility of wasps,
she nevertheless balanced it with this scientific take on mosquitos and ticks:
Dr. Sumner: “Mosquitos and ticks can fuck off.”
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I had to kill three under construction wasp nests and an under construction mud dauber nest two days ago. They were building them right outside the entrances to our home. We draw the line when we have to dodge them coming and going.
They’re motherfuckers, but I still feel guilty about killing them.
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That’s not what Dr Sumner said originally 
(PS Dr Sumner is referred to as ‘she’ in the article. Not sure how you managed to lift that quote without noting this but, yeah, for fair balance I should have included that bit too.)
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You lucked out.
I had a yellow jacket fly in my open window and down the back of my shirt one time. Stung me multiple times before I could pull over - thankfully I was on a surface street - and rip off my shirt to get it out. I’m sure the people that saw this thought I was a crazy person…
I also had one fly up my shorts while I was mountain biking. I was on the way to visit my grandfather at his care facility on a hillside in the Bay Area and a nurse was nice enough to give me some burn cream or something that helped with the pain.
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I’ve had similar things happen, but luckily with bees. One shot is a lot more tolerable than the rapid-fire, empty-the-clip approach of yellowjackets!
Yes, sorry, I should know better than to make a blanket statement about bugs.
Wasps also feed on sweet things like sugars and the nectar of flowers.
Drunk wasps in England btw:
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Working as a treeplanter wasp nests were a major hazard in the summer months. On multiple occasions I jammed my shovel into a nest and opened it up.
In the process I learned something useful, if nervewracking. Wasps will go for motion - if you freeze in place they don’t see you.
After one such nest opening moment I once spent 10 minutes with a cloud of wasps circling me, crawling all over me (up my pant legs fuckfuck), before they eventually relaxed and went back into their nests without having ‘found me’ or stung me. Then I ran for it.
The freezing in place thing works unless it doesn’t. If they’ve spotted you then you must run for your life.
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Please strike “wasp nest” and “yellowjacket nest” wherever they appear and replace with “cyclopean horror-hive”.
Edit: was anyone else traumatically reminded of the below boathouse by this video?
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Been there, done that (on a recumbent), and it tagged me on the right hip. There are worse places to get hit, but that was bad enough. That episode taught me the value of spandex, however ridiculous I might look in it.
A couple of years ago, I got popped in the face by one on another ride, right in the mustache. It must not have been able to get much venom into me, since the pain ebbed pretty quickly, and it didn’t swell up (the Benadryl I took when I got home probably helped as well).
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I’m in East Texas. My county’s democratic party website still has Beto O’Rourke listed as a Senate candidate. They aren’t corrupt, as in order to be corrupt, one must have power. They are certainly incompetent, though.
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It’s messy here. We have a Democratic state rep going to prison because he colluded with Republicans and a chemical plant to conceal the degree his constituents’ neighborhoods had been poisoned. He’s black and a Democrat, so so far he’s the only one for-sure going to prison.
There’s also ongoing collusion in districting. Quite a few of the older black Democrats, some of whom have significant ties to the (or are even from the) Civil Rights days, are in bed with the state GOP so that the GOP gets its districts and the old guard Democrats keep their districts, while denying fair representation in a process that keeps the total number of Democratic districts lower than it should be. It’s pretty sickening.
Younger and more progressive African-American politicians try to break the strangle-hold in Montgomery and Birmingham, but it’s tough going.
I’m not mentioning non-black Democrats much because there aren’t many of them here.
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in charlotte nc we kill the wasp/hornets/yellow jackets within a couple of hours, whats this crap of it taking a couple of days?!?!?!?
Are you dealing with nests the size of a VW Beetle?
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I remember playing F:NV just walking around and minding my own business and then this flying thing starts attacking me. I thought it was just a bloatfly but then it killed me in like 2 hits. That’s when I learned not to fuck with the cazador. Even at high levels, if you stumble across a group of them you can get taken down in quick order.
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Man, could you imagine a zombie/wasp nest crossover in The Walking Dead? Yikes.
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