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Max, this story actually made it to our local news on the Philadelphia stations here in South Jersey! Evidently a nest of over 100,000 wasps has been plaguing an area of New Zealand by attacking people, and Mike had himself lowered from a helicopter into their nest, high at the top of a tree, to poison them. I guess, now, he must be getting his "15 minutes" as some kind of National Hero up there? More details, please.
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Dear WO'N: You don't need any damned helicopter to get rid of wasps. Just like bees, they will feed on sugar water laced with insecticide and take it back and wipe out the colony. Of course it also wipes out bees in the area, so any in hives would have to be removed. I used to keep bees, and worked with an old timer putting hives on cranberry bogs to pollinate the crop. He didn't even wear a head net, and he would get over a hundred stings before he even expressed annoyance. When bees sting, backward pointing teeth on stinger prevents bees from removing stinger, leaving little white poison sac, with smooth muscle still contracting and relaxing to pump venom into wound. He often had more poison sacs than hairs on his pate. Wasps can sting repeatedly, and their venom hurts worse. When I was about four years old, my mother took me blueberry picking. A path I wanted to go through was blocked by an old newspaper draped over a small bush. I gave it a kick and went through. It was a paper wasp nest bigger than a basketball, and I was clad only in bathing trunks. I got hundreds of stings. Never again did I go blueberry picking. Wasps are also easily killed by just the fine droplets of petroleum base of sprays. They breathe through very fine tubes called spiracles which get clogged by the spray, so the wasp dies very quickly from lack of oxygen.
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Dear Max: you have overlooked fact I saw wasps come to get the poisoned sugar water. No need of climbing after them.
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Not only dismissive, but wrong as well Max. We had a wasp next under the base of a tree on our boundary. My neighbour and I used all kinds of chemicals to try to kill them off, but if you miss any at all you've failed. We finally dealt with it by burying the entrance under about a foot of clay. The wasps, presumably, starved to death.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Well, Dr. Bill, he was suspended from a helicopter in a special suit, and was swarmed with wasps...the nest was gargantuan...I've never seen anything like it! I just watched the footage...really. And Max, you mean we heard about this story all the way down here in New Jersey before you did!?
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Dear CK You tempt me to suggest you deserved the wasps. I suspect I have had more experience with them than you have had. Of course Kiwiland excels in many things.
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What is it with blueberry picking?! I had the same experience as you Bill. Put my foot right into a wasps' nest. Let me just say I did not have the greatest weekend.
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deliberately not attaching this to any particular post:
Speak with contempt of none, from slave to king, The meanest Bee hath, and will use, a sting. ----Poor Richard's Almanac
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