The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Gardens => Topic started by: smhowie on June 24, 2014, 09:20:24 pm
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I put a pile of turf to rot down to make compost. now it looks like wasps have made a home in it. I have two questions.
do wasps nest under ground?
and what is the best way to deal with them?
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wev had wasps nesting in the grass verge. or in our shed, once inside my daughters trainer!!
we only get rid of them if they are posing a problem and are too close to the house. in that case we spray and run!
we had a wasp man round once who charged us £45 to spray a nest with fly spray, and knock the nest into a black bin bag!!! i felt my ignorance was sorely charged that day.
i do react badly to wasps stings so will try to get rid if they are going to be trouble. the longer you leave it the bigger their nest becomes.
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The only wasps nests I've seen are the beautiful paper ones they make from chewing wood, and they hang them from something. Oh no, we did have a huge one in a bank when I was a child, but I didn't actually see it.
Wasps can be a pest, especially in the jam-making season (which is when they are dying off, so hungry) but they are ok the rest of the year. I quite like them, as long as they don't sting me, because they are great at picking caterpillars and greenfly etc from crops. One year we had a wasps nest in a gooseberry bush; we had had no fruit for the previous 2 or 3 years because of sawfly larvae. That year I couldn't get near my gooseberries for busy wasps, but the following year, and ever since, we have had great crops as the wasps had devoured all the sawfly larvae - heroes in my book :thumbsup:
They only use their nests for a single year, so if you can wait for them to finish then they won't be coming back to that spot and you can use your loam by the winter.
I've no idea how to get rid of them, although I think you can burn the nest :( People have as many gruesome ways of bumping off wasps as they do rats.
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we definitely had wasps in the soil in the verge, but whether they still went to the trouble making the paper nest, i dont know as we tended to fill the tunnel hole in if we could. they moved about a metre each year in the verge amongst a thick bed of borage, tho that is dying down by the time we see a nest.
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When I was young and still at home, oh so long ago, we had a nest in a sloping lawn, in the evening I poured deisel down it and set it alight. It sorted the problem out but we had smoke signals for days.
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We get small ones in the sheds in the Summer. Last year we had one right by the back door but because the wasps were used to us coming and going they weren't bothered by us and we didn't bother them.
We had another nest in the ground amongst the brash in the top field (much neglected I'm ashamed to say - we don't go up there often as the sheep usually come down to the gate when they see us). I went up there to do some brash bashing one afternoon and they (the wasps) went mental - chased me down the hill............ like something out of the Beano comic and I ended up in hospital with anaphylactic shock. I need to go up there again this weekend so I will be dressed up to the nines and sending the dog out on point.
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Oh bad luck when you're allergic to the stings Suziequeue.
Isn't there someone else you can persuade to do the work near the nest? Do you carry an anti-anaphylaxis shot?
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I put a pile of turf to rot down to make compost. now it looks like wasps have made a home in it. I have two questions.
do wasps nest under ground?
and what is the best way to deal with them?
Most native UK wasps will use a hole in the ground , cavity wall etc or build a paper hanging nest that will house upwards of 200 new wasps.
Some nests can over winter and become massive constructs with multiple queens laying like crazy and reach four to five feet across .. these big nests are often found in roof voids in places that have a high average temp such as old folks homes and hospitals.
The last one I took out like this filled 15 black bin bags , the wasps had gnawed the roof trusses to which the ceiling was nailed so that only a few mm of timber was left supporting the plaster boards. Had to construct a massive room filling support to stop the ceiling & roof coming down on the residents. Rentokil had supposedly exterminated the nest three time that year.
There is a newish kid on the block called the European or Continental wasp they are about 35 mm long and rarely use the ground for nests much preferring to put a nest 2 to 30 feet off the ground in shrubs , bushes and hanging from trees .
So if your wasps are these monsters give them a wide berth , seven people died as a result of being multiply stung by them in France last year apparently .
One of their stings can kill a healthy small dog or make a five year old child very ill.
These European wasp invaders have taken up residence in SA18 3BZ this year 7 are very close to our home .
So do be aware that they are capable of colonising almost anywhere in the UK even if it does tend to be a wee bit wet most years.
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What you describe sounds like the Asian Hornet Cloddopper. They sting for little or no reason and lay a pheromone trail back to their hive so the rest can find and kill you. I'm in France and one of these deaths was near us. The easy to spot difference between the relatively harmless native hornets and the Asian ones is their yellow feet. So if they get close enough for you to see they have yellow feet start running!!!
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What you describe sounds like the Asian Hornet Cloddopper. They sting for little or no reason and lay a pheromone trail back to their hive so the rest can find and kill you. I'm in France and one of these deaths was near us. The easy to spot difference between the relatively harmless native hornets and the Asian ones is their yellow feet. So if they get close enough for you to see they have yellow feet start running!!!
OMG, sounds like a plot for a horror movie!
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we have one of those paper nests just hanging inside the door of the shed and it freaks me out every time i go in there. First time i saw it it was the size of a golf ball but left it and now its the size of mini football :o
have visions of the damn thing dropping on my head one of these days, have asked the OH to remove it before it gets any bigger :sofa:
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Yikes - I'd hate to walk past a wasps nest several times a day!
The Asian Hornet hasn't been spotted in the UK yet, has it? I'm sure we're still on high alert but I've not heard of any verified sightings.....
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just to let you all know wasps moved on now topping up borders etc with the loam many thanks for your posts.