Help Dear Friends

I'm wasp-phobic and our garden is planted with many cotoneasters (I had no idea!!!).


Mostly they've kept to the bushes but today they're all over the garden and are coming into the house at a rate of one about every half hour - I have to leave the door open for the dogs.

I'm really phobic - sweats and heart-stopping panic and bolt-instinct. I'm now hiding inside and just weeping almost constantly and a bit exhausted.

I've never been stung. Does it really hurt? Are they really aggressive? Will they attack if I ignore them? I literally scream and run away if they come within 3 feet.

I've always been scared of them but was once sitting in the middle of several hundred people in a lecture theatre when one was flying about. It climbed up my neighbours trouser and stung her over and over on the leg. Now if I see them I run out of shops/cafes etc and hide in my car.

My husband doesn't tolerate my phobia and he's due home later and will be annoyed that I'm inside and so upset . I'm going to have to pretend to do some work so that he will leave me alone and all I want to do is hide under my duvet.



Any suggestions for coping strategies?

I hate wasps with a vengeance : but unlike you, I have been stung, more than once. I can't say that it'll be painless : but it is more a case of discomfort and often itchiness, rather than pain. Vinegar on a wasp sting will ease the discomfort.

Wasps are unlikely to attack unless provoked, though the risk is higher in September/October, when their queen has passed away and the wasp gets confused. Even then, you'd have to be unlucky to get stung.

Flapping and reacting with a lot of movement towards wasps tends to aggravate them, so keeping movement slow and deliberate is a better way of coping than panicking is. One option might be to get in some wasp traps to attract the wasps away from where you are - my parents have them hanging in their fruit trees so that they can enjoy their meals outdoors - you put sweet liquid in the bottom of the vessel, wasps creep in through the hole, and can't get out again. If there is any suspicion of your having a wasp's nest in the eaves of the house, then get pest control to deal with it. Yes, in autumn wasps get more generally crabby, but for the rest of the time they're not nearly as aggressive as people think, and they are in fact part of a garden's pest control system - just unfortunate that they also tend to like soft fruit...

wasps buzzing up and down windows indoors may be trapped in a glass, a bit of paper slide under to seal them in, and released back out of doors, or alternatively calmly squished - I tend to use the British National Formulary when one gets in at work. If you move deliberately and purposefully, they don't spot you coming .

Wasp stings do hurt a bit, but not for very long. They will only sting if you stand on them with bare feet, (this has happened to me when walking barefoot on the lawn), or if you otherwise trap them. However, they very rarely sting for the sake of it.

(I once tried to wrap one in a tea towel when I was a child, and the wretched thing stung me through the towel.)

I?m not entirely sure, but I think wasps can only sting once at a time. And don't bees die after stinging?

However, wasps like to feast on rotting fruit at this time of the year, and rotting fruit creates alcohol. I believe it is this which makes wasps more aggressive in late summer, and loosing their Queen makes then fly around aimlessly.

I don?t think any wasps survive the winter, but their larvae start a new colony in the spring.

SB

Don't know about wasps, but bees do perish after they've stung, so they will avoid stinging if at all possible.

The only time I've been stung was a case of serious human provocation, when my son was 3 or 4 and he disturbed some in the garden. They got caught in his hair (yes it was a bit long ) and stung his head. I whacked them out of his hair fairly vigorously (energetically enough for a ring to fly off my finger and never be found again) and, not unsurprisingly, they had a bit of a go back. We ended up with about four stings each, which we dabbed with vinegar (bicarb for a bee, vinegar for a vasp). It wasn't the most pleasant experience but it wasn't the most painful - I regularly get stung by nettles when I'm gardening and I really don't remember it being worse than that - in fact the stinging sensation went far quicker than that from nettles. And at least I knew then that neither of us had a wasp sting allergy. I don't think they die after stinging, but I don't think they sting willy-nilly.

And, as Swellbox says, avoid those that are around the fruit trees.

Feel better now Thanks for all the comments.

It was very strange - the temperature dropped a bit and suddenly they all disappeared. I checked the cotoneaster and they had gone from there too. It's still in flower and there were literally hundreds of wasps. I had thought about taking the hedge clippers and cutting off all the flowers so the wasps wouldn't come back but then there would be no berries for the birds

I think the fear of the sting is the worst part. My brother was stung as a child and he became phobic. That's probably the reason I became paranoid and because I anticipate the sting being horrific.

The 'flapping' and running around I absolutely can't control - it really is pure panic and I know it's the wrong thing to do!

The only time I've had more than the odd stray in the house was when I had a nest - are you sure you haven't got a nest somewhere? I had one next under the eaves in the bedroom and another nest at ground level behind an air brick. I only discovered the ground level one when I realised that I was sitting gardening in the flight path but they weren't bothering me.

I'm sorry they have such a bad effect on you

edit: you posted whilst I was writing this, glad you feel better now

I hate wasps. The house seemed to be full of them last year and they kept buzzing around the room with the piano in it. Then I went up to the loft to get something and saw that there was a nest in the corner - I have never made it down the loft ladder so quickly. I waited till a proper cold day in winter (below freezing), went up armed with cans of poison and sprayed the heck out of the empty nest in case there was a dormant queen in it. I know, it's not the most environmentally friendly thing to do but I really hate them and I wanted them out of my house.

I then got two fake nests from a company called Waspinator and hung them in the loft - wasps are apparently thick enough that if they see a fake nest when they're out scouting for where to build a home, they won't build a home where they can see them. I don't have any wasps this year but I don't know if it was because of the terrible weather or if those things really work. Apparently people take them on picnics and hang them above where they're sitting and it acts as a repellant because the wasps avoid the fake nest even when they're outside; I don't know if that would help you.

Kleenezee sell an imitation wasp's nest which they claim will keep wasps out of your garden. Apparently wasps are quite territorial and won't go within a certain distance of another nest. That presumably wouldn't work if you do have a nest nearby though.

Another thing I've read about is a home made trap: you fill a jamjar about 3/4 full with water and smear jam or honey over the top quarter of the inside. Make a smallish hole in the jamjar lid and leave the ensemble outside a little way from your door. The wasps are supposed to find their way in by the smell, but be unable to find their way out again. As they tire, they end up in the water and drown.

I don't agree that wasps don't sting unless provoked. I've always believed that wasps can sting as often as they like, and they do tend to. The sting may not be too bad in some parts of the body, but I've been stung in the throat area, and believe me - it HURTS! I am not a wasp lover!

I think it was having kids which cured me of silly running around within 10 feet of a wasp, which I have done all my life. I didn't want to look stupid in front of them, and if one was in the house, I had to get rid of it.

If you have that many in the garden, and they are coming in the house, you probably have a nest somewhere near. You should get someone in to check. Wasps are nasty little creatures when they want to be, and you should not have to tolerate them. My husband has the same lack of tolerance, but he will go and get rid of nests....

The first song I ever wrote was a spoof folk song called There's a wasps' nest in my compost bin...

Hmm. I remember a couple of naughty incidents involving wasps and their like.

We have all heard the phrase about 'not stirring up the hornets' nest, but some friends and I found one high up in a tree during the school summer holidays, and we regularly used to poke it with a very long stick and then run away.

It became a bit of a dare to see how long we could do this for before a swarm of angry hornets came after us, until one afternoon we took it a bit too far. We all jumped on our bikes and peddled like fury to get out of the woods and away to safety. I doubt that even Bradley Wiggins or Victoria Pendleton would have got close we were peddling so fast!

The second story involves a pub on the North East coast in a tiny fishing village. We sat outside in the beer garden enjoying a drink with crab and fresh salmon sandwiches, and it soon became apparent that there was a wasp problem.

Anyhow, a bunch of yuppies decided to join the table, bringing their Bacardi and Cokes with them. After a few minutes, a mobile phone rang, and one of the yuppies answered in a very loud voice; "OK yah, OK yah, are you outside? OK yah; have you brought the new Beemer, OK yah, we'll be right there". (

(Why do yuppies phones always have network coverage, even through railway tunnels and in places where nobody else's phone will work?)

With that the Yuppies all left, seemingly never to return, leaving their [I thought] empty Coke cans on the table. Within a few minutes, a wasp was showing interest in one of the empty Coke cans, so I helped it in through the opening in the top. Other members of my family followed suit. Wasps, it seems, are stupid things, so once one wasp had committed Hare Kari in an empty Coke can, others quickly followed, and within five minutes or so a couple of dozen or more wasps had disappeared.

To our horror, the yuppies repapered about twenty minutes later, sat down at the table with their friends, and poured the remainder of the Coke into their glasses - complete with wasps. One of them muttered something about ghastly northerners, and with that they all got up and left.

I really think that perhaps I should make my confession to Fr. Simon Mayo on Radio 2.

SB

Once at a friend's barbecue, we noticed that there was an enormous spider sitting bloated in its web in the hedge. We also had a wasp problem. It didn't take a genius to think of what we tried next - caught a wasp in a glass and let it out in the spiderweb. The spider ate it with relish. We were a bit surprised.

I should have mentioned; wasps only ever use a nest for one season. They never re-use it, but move on somewhere else every year. We had one in our roof one summer. We did some research on them, and they didn't bother us so we left them alone, but they definitely didn't return the following year.

However, wasps do leave their larvae (i.e. next year's wasps) somewhere during the winter, but I am not too sure where.

Edit: I should also mention that wasps provide a vital function in preying on insects which destroy crops, but they do not usually harm healthy crops themselves.

SB

They can come back. I know this because when I got the flat 3 years ago, there was a wasp nest in the loft in a different place, which I got an exterminator to kill. 2 years later, they were back in a different nest in a different corner of the loft.

I must be unusual, I don't mind wasps at all! The are really usefull in the garden as they eat cabbage white caterpillars- when you/ve seen a row of Cavello Nero destroyed overnight then you really hate cabbage white catapillers (just noticed that I haven't a clue how to spell cattterpillor!)

I'm happy to have them in the garden, it's just in my loft that I mind! I figured that hanging up the fake nests was the best compromise (if it works), rather than blasting them with insecticide I'd try and induce them to live elsewhere.

I got stung on my left hind paw by a sleepy critter the size of the QE2 a couple of autumns ago. And yes, it hurt....A LOT!! I was still in pain several days later and couldn't wear shoes unless absolutely necessary and had to force-feed myself a skip full of anti-histamine. It was a totally unprovoked attack! I was lying face down on my bed watching brain-dead TV at the time....

Critter.

Needless to say he didn't live long enough to tell any of his remaining friends about me....

Give-Me-Four-Paws-Rather-Than-Six-Legs-Any-Day-Of-The-Week-Bag x

Wasps may return to the same building or loft, but they only use a nest once. As others have said, wasps are territorial, so they like to keep clear of existing nests, even though they may be extinct.

In other words, there is no point in pouring expensive and harmful chemicals on to an old wasps nest, because it will never be used again.

SB

That's if you know it is definitely unused. I read that they may leave a dormant queen in the nest over the winter, and you can't be sure it's definitely unused unless you find this, or you pour chemicals onto it to be sure that if there was one, it isn't there any more. I've left the now-for-sure dead nest there, because now I know it is definitely unused.

Purely coincidentally, was listening to the radio and the incidental music by Vaughan Williams to the play came on.

Ugh, wasps. I do sympathise. Just reading this thread is making me shudder. I've not been stung so far, so I don't know why I am phobic of the evil little beasts. For some reason they are always very interested in me. When I was little my mum used to tell me to stand completely still and they would leave me alone, but they didn't and I couldn't. It still brings me out in a cold sweat thinking about that horrible draughty buzz when one goes near your ear. However I still don't like the idea of killing them. I'd prefer they just buzz off and leave me alone.

I had a nest somewhere near my back door once. I kept having wasps come in the house, but I drew the line and called pest control when I found one making itself comfortable in my bed. I never found out where the nest was, but I was nearly sick when I opened the wheelie bin and saw the football-sized thing.

Was it that nice sweetcorn relish?