Beware the insects

[pete46]

tempt fate MUCH!? :D

[philip in china]

I have a block of wood next to my drill press. It has holes drilled in it to take bits, chuck key etc. Yellow jackets love those holes. If I see one go into a hole I just push a drill in behind him.

[BeaverDamForge]

At least there ARE bees this year...

Good Luck!

[Dave Leppo]

I noticed these little mud-tunnels running up my walls in a few locations (TERMITES!). This is a wooden structure with a dirt and gravel floor; there is a “foundation” of pressure treated wood about a foot high off the dirt. My strategy has been to scrape the adobe tunnels off, dig the dirt up next to the wall a few inches deep, and sprinkle BORAX next to the wall. Any time I have untreated wood setting directly on the floor, I sprinkle (dump) borax under it. Haven’t seen them come back, yet…..

[the_sandy_creek_forge]

Anyone else having infestation problems?

Mice are always a problem... but that's been covered here somewhere before...

We got a nice mess with mosquitoes already. Illinois River's been backed up, backwaters are flooded and making prime breeding grounds for all sorts of buzzing, humming, flying monsters.

On another wildlife note, I haven't seen Mr. Toad or Ms. Dove yet this year. Usually Mr. Toad crawls out from under my shelfs about late April/early May and manages to be underfoot for the rest of the summer. He'd been around for the last few years though, so age mighta finally caught up with him.
I usually see Ms. Dove getting her nest back together about the same time (she's particularly fond of the post tops on the north side of the shop). No matter how loud I get, she just sits right there on her nest. I figure she's either deaf or possibly the only creature in the world more stubborn than I am

-Aaron @ the SCF

[jayco]

It was 60 degrees fareinhiedt this evening;a perfect time to catch up on some small forge work.........that is, until I heard the buzzing.
Turns out the bees are in a crack in the large stump right that holds my post vise.........right next to the forge!

Since the weather was cool, and they were flying slow, I managed to knock down 5 with my cap.
I won this skirmish, but the war is not over yet........

This may be a long summer.........and a long thread!
James

[Frosty]

The electric fly swatters are a lot of fun if you're going with manual extermination anyway.

If on the other hand you just want to be rid of them a little 1/4C of gasoline poured in the crack will finish them in short order and not leave neurotoxins laying about.

WD40 is good for attacking the nest while they're warm enough to fly.

I use a little gas on the ground nesting yellowjackets around here and WD40 on the paper nesting variety. I've never been stung doing it either, gas or WD knocks them right down and they don't get up.

DON'T light the gas! It not only tends to light the surrounding on fire it doesn't kill the bugs, the natural draft draws the gas fumes up and away from the nest.

You probably don't want to do it while you're forging either but . . . THAT'S a judgement call.

Frosty

[jayco]

Carburator cleaner and brake cleaner also work..........Just spray it on 'em..........and no, I don't light it.

A few years back we had yellow jackets in a knot hole in a wooden barn post.
I used a squirt can to put a little gasoline in the hole.
The guy working with me wanted to light it.
I told him it was a bad idea and finally convinced him that we could have burned the barn down doing that.

[brant]

Take deodorant with you when you go to fight the bees. If you get stung that will remove the pain faster than anything I have ever seen. Was up to Alexander Bay at Bolt Castle. When my wife

[Glenn]

Brant
got to the top of the forum page and click user profile
click edit your details
enter your location and save.

We would like to know where in the world you are located.

[Glenn]

How many times do you reach out for a door handle, like you have done every time you enter a building.

Yes that is a standard house brick, but what looks to be fuzz on the spider is actually baby spiders. Spiders bites can be dangerous or deadly depending on the spider.

Warning: spider photo attached.

[ThomasPowers]

I have blackwidows in my shop. Take a little more care and they don't bother me and if they are there they are there for a reason. I'd make a snake door for the local kingsnake to come in and deal with the mouse problem, save that the rattlesnakes might decide to use it too...

Life in the southwest!

[Frosty]

Glenn:

I think mother nature is trying to tell you something. Maybe your fortune lays in the direction of arachnid door hardware!

Frosty

[ThomasPowers]

Or trying to teach me to shake out my gloves and not to put my hands where I can't see them! Tightening up the bolts for the postvises on the workbench for example...

[Makoz]

All this talk of mud wasps (daubers?) and plumbing makes me think of my airforce days, training as an engine mech. As you would expect aircraft engines, especially jets, are a nest of pipes, particularly around the fuel control. It was drummed into us early on to blank or plug every pipe we undid, to keep out dust, foriegn objects and mud wasps! As a way of reinforcing that habit the instructors at trade school had a bent for inserting folded paper notes, with MUD WASP written on them, into any unplugged pipe or fitting. Then you'd proceed to reasemble the engine, and only when completed would they tell you to go back and check if such-and-such a pipe held a mud wasp...resulting in a red-faced apprentice and a cross on an assessment sheet!
They are a problem where I work now, plugging up gas burners in the Ceramics gas kiln (8 burners), if unused for some time, as well as BBQ's.

All this talk of bees reminds me of something that happened when I was a kid.......
Have you ever heard that if you throw a rock into a hornet's nest it(the rock) will come back and hit you right between the eyes?
Well, I'd heard that saying.....and thought..........'well that's just silly!'
So....one day I happened onto a hornet's nest hanging on a low tree limb and decided to test the validity of the old saying.

I was probably 30 ft. from the hornet's nest........I picked up a rock.....threw it and hit the nest dead on target.

One second later.....something hit my upper lip.......and I felt severe pain.
For an instant, I thought the rock had somehow come back and hit me.
It turn out that the hornet is capable of retracing the trajectory of a thrown object back to it's source.

I guess his aim was off a little ....4 inches low........but I went to school all the next week with a swollen upper lip.
Some things you just gotta learn the hard way, I reckon.

James Flannery

Strange you should say that, I did a similar thing with a paper wasp nest on a brick wall, shooting an air rifle (BB gun). Got myself smack, plump between the eyes!:mad:

Cheers,
Makoz

[irnsrgn]

all this talk of bugs and flying insects makes me wonder if anyone makes industrial size hanging fly paper and those bottle traps for wasps are good too, then the bumblebees. Sounds like the perfect place to use a fly press, is there any market for bumblebee or wasp oil too.

On the serious side, the best thing to use on bees, wasps spiders etc, is the spray silicone with the straw sticking out, if your aim is good you can hit them in the air. any of the spray penetrating oils do a number on the flying invaders as they breath thru their bodies and if coated with silicon or some petroleum based product they suffocate rather quickly.

[ThomasPowers]

Go to the local feed store and see what they have for fly control in stables! Generally you don't want flypaper too large because you want to trash it often to get rid of the bugs on it.

[jayco]

I was in my shop this evening, using the bench grinder,.....when out of nowhere........This little bumblebee whizzes by me a couple of times and stings me on the right elbow!

Apparently, I had made him REALLY MAD!
It seems that 'once was not enough' for him. He kept diving at me........to the point I had to leave the shop for a couple minutes!

When he finally quit diving and buzzing, I crept back into the shop to see where he had went. He had lit on the backside of my handcrank blower handle.........in a place where I couldn't hit him of course....(I think he knew that!)

I looked frantically around the shop for the wd40, brake cleaner,,,,,,,well anything!

Believe it or not, all I could find was a spray bottle of liquid 'TurtleWax!

YEAH, LIKE THAT'S GONNA STOP HIM!!

Having nothing else, I sprayed him liberally with it, and within a minute or so he stopped moving,........

I guess he died of 'waxy buildup'!

Why can't I just find frogs or little turtles in my shop, like everyone else?:confused:

James:)

[Pault17]

Evidently turtle wax works even on those little amc hornets.

A few weeks ago in the mig class I'm taking, one of the other students came over with the charred remains of a large wasp that happened to fly right into his rod (he was stick welding something) and pretty muched vaporized everything but his shell.

As for the spider by the door. looks kinda wolf spider-ish. I do home inspections and the last place I go is the crawl space. I tell people that I like to save the best for last. the funny thing is, is that I really like going under. The only time I backed out was because the crawl space looked like something from an indiana jones movie. the spiderwebs were so thick, I spent ten minutes clearing out a place to start from. I started smacking spiders on the ground and recognized them as distinctly resembling the brown recluse. I told the seller to fog the basement and have someone else clear out the webs before I went back in. that happened two weeks later.