OT: WASPS, BEES and HORNETS OH MY!!

[Ash]

Yesterday (8-31-04) I had a very frightening experience.

Early in the morning I went out to my car to roll the windows down and open my sunroof so my car wouldn't literally be an oven when I got into it to go somewhere.
There's nothing worse than sweltering in your own car and scorching your hand when you touch the steering wheel.

Well later that afternoon, I got into my car, started it up and headed to the grocery store to pick up a few things.

Little did I know that sometime earlier, two large wasps had managed to find their way into my car through those open windows.



I didn't see them as I got behind the wheel.
Apparently they were in the rear hatch area wandering/crawling around unbeknownst to me.

I saw the first one flying around in my rear view mirror when I was about a block away and in heavy traffic no less.
I thought to myself, "Oh s**t, is that a goddam wasp!?"
I looked over my right shoulder and saw that there were indeed two wasps.

To make matters worse, they both decided to come up to the front of the car to pay me a visit.
They were obviously angry that I had disturbed THEIR hangout.
One landed on my right hand which gripped the wheel and started to go up my arm.  It stopped about half way up on my right forearm.
The other landed right on top of my head and to my horror, started to make its way down.
Yes, it crawled down and evidently decided it wanted to check out the contours of my face!

So I'm sitting there driving at like 35 MPH and I have this big wasp on my face and I'm thinking, "Aw f**k!  Please don't sting me!  Please don't sting me!"
It crawled down over my right eye and I actually had to close it and drive with only my left eye open for 20 seconds or so.
It went down my right cheek and then crossed over to the left side of my face right over my mouth.
I kid you not!
I wanted to swipe at it but was deathly afraid I'd get a stinger right in the face.
I just let it do its thing.
Once it was near my left ear I managed to get rid of it by leaning my head almost out the window and it flew off and went out of the car into traffic.

While that all happened, the wasp on my right started up again and only made it to my shoulder, flew off and then landed on the inside of my windshield.
I tried to swipe at it to get it to go out the passenger window but that only p**sed it off.
It started to buzz loudly and then it flew all the way back to the rear of my car and then back to the windshield again.
Luckily for me I had an extra pair of shoes behind the driver's seat and I grabbed one and used it to smash the little bastard against the glass.
I had to break out the Windex after I got back home to clean the mess up.

WHEW!!!!

I have been stung by both wasps and bees and lemme tell you, it ain't no fun!
It f**kin' hurts like a sunofab***h!
Once when I was about 12 years old, I stepped on a dandelion with bare feet and got stung right in-between my right pinky toe.
OUCH!!!
It was a week before I could fully place all my weight down on my right foot.

Are you alergic to bee or wasp venom?
I have a friend who is and when we were boys, he nearly died from a bee sting.
It put him in the hospital for a few days.

Have any of you had a freaky experience with bees, wasps or hornets?



Post Edited (09-01-04 18:21)

[trekgeezer]

I have been stung by wasps and yes it hurts. But the worst thing that  happened to me was getting double stung by the same scorpion.

We lived in north Louisiana  and during the late summer and early fall when the weather would get dry, scorpions had a tendancy to come in the house looking for water.  Now these are a  small variety, at their largest they were about an 1 1/2 inches long and their sting is about like that of a wasp.

Anyway, while getting ready to go to bed one night my wife was in the bedroom and I was watching the last of the news or something.  I turned off the tv and turned to go down the hall when I felt something stinging the bottom of my foot.  Have you ever touched something hot and it took you a couple seconds to realize that it's burning you ? This is how it was, first  thing I thought was  there's a needle in the carpet , then it hit me. I jumped and grabbed my foot, making the other foot came right down on top of the damned thing and he got me again.  I go running down the hall and literally fell into our bedroom and my wife is like 'Oh my god, what's wrong?'.  She got the privilege of finding him and pounding him with a shoe.

I had sore feet for a couple of days.  To a lot of people getting stung can be deadly.

[Mr_Vindictive]

I've had a lot of expereince with Ground Hornets (Yellowjackets).  Two of my friends, and myself, were out in the woods here in NC when we were about 12.  One of my friends leaned on a small, old tree and it immediatly fell to the ground.  It seems that some ground hornets had made a nest around the roots of the tree.  We were immediatly attacked for breaking open their lair.  We each got stung around 15-20 times.

I also worked as a grounds-keeper at a retirement home while in high school.  One day my boss asked me to shovel up a pile of leaves that had been sitting out in the sun for a couple of weeks.  It was a large pile so I decided to get as much with my shovel each time as possible.  My first few shovel loads were uneventful, but about the fourth time, I hit the middle of the pile.  

And there was another nest of ground hornets.  This time I was stung exactly 28 times.  They stung my head, ears, behind my ears, face, neck, arms, etc. Unfortunatly, they will cling to you till the very end.  As soon as their stinger is dug into your flesh, they are hooked in.  

Needless to say, I hate the friggin bastards.  


Trek, I don't know what I would do if I were to be stung by a scorpion.  I have a huge fear of the buggers.

[Scott]

I've always noticed that people with lots of nose hair don't get bees up their nose as much. It's rather odd that a bee would try to nest in ones nose especially while they are awake. Nose hair can be good for keeping out dust and bees, but it can also be unsightly.



Lately I've been using the CONAIR nose trimmer and haven't had any bee problems, but fall is on it's way and those pesky bees will be looking for a place to spend the winter. Only time will tell.



What is really a mystery is those with obstructed ears because of ear hair growth sometimes have more wax in them. Why doesn't an ear full of hair stop a bee from making wax there? What I'm thinking is that these bees are getting in some other way. If you use the trimmer on the ears you may be able to detect them going in the more direct way which would be through the ear. This is were the trimmer can come in handy for both nose and ears. If anyone on the board will be experimenting with this like myself over the next few months keep me informed to your results and the region in which you live.




This is where our interest in movies meets with real science. Alot of people wonder at why we take such an unending interest in acting or the labor intensive viewing of all types of films.



Post Edited (09-01-04 10:07)

[trekgeezer]

Hey Scott, that's kind of a strange tangent to get off on there man.

[daveblackeye15]

Was that you Scott? The one guy with all that ear hair? I was caught off card by that one.

But yeah, bee n' stuff. I really can't tell the differenece between yellow jacks, wasps, and hornets. I normally catergory it as bee's and stining-yellow-bugs-that- can-sting-you-more-than-once-without-dying.

It was at one Scouting Thing (don't know what it was really called) this was about 9 or 10 months ago. My troop and I where at the Scouting Thing which was outside when a Yellow Jacket (the guys told me it was) got close to my chest. My usual response is going "AAA!" or "AIIIIIEE!!" and turns around. That often would work.

It didn't this time.

This bastard was persistant.

Instead it flew around me some more and then landed on my inner thigh on my right leg. I was now moving around maddly saying "GET IT OFF ME GET IT OFF ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Then a felt a sharp twinge feeling on my leg and then I saw the Yellow Jacket fly off. Well it seems that this Yellow Jacket had bitten me. On the way to the Medical Tent I was waiting for a allegic reaction. This was the first time I had ever been bitten by a insect like this so I wasn't sure if I was allergic or not. So the doctor put some kind of pump against the spot of the bite and then used it to suck out the venom, then he added medicine and said I was fine. For the rest of the day it looked like I had a hickey on my thigh and I tried to regain the points I lost on my "Tough Guy" status (Don't worry I've regained them with BONUS!)


Another story that just occured recently , just last Friday, I will mention. This didn't hapen to me but to one of the other guys in the troop. My troop went out to a camp that was about a hour drive away, we were going to Jambo or something like that. But when we got to our campsite we noticed several Yellow Jackets flying low to the ground looking for food, this caused me to get a little nervous.

Things went well for a while, I was relaxing in somebody's chair, one guy with his dad went out to catch snakes, other guys were having snacks when suddenly Richard bounded into camp. Our campsite is outside of a large field and Richard was walking about 30 feet away from camp when he stepped on a Yellow Jacket nest. He said about 27 bees came out and attacked him. But the moment he heard the bee's buzzing he turned around and ran. Some got on him but he quickly flicked them off and killed them (about 18 he said). The camp staff tried looking for a bug bomb but they couldn't find one so we just had to live with it till Sunday. Surprizingly Ricahrd didn't get stung once by the bee's attack.

At Jambo I also saw quite a few "Bald Face Hornets" which sounded and ARE scary as hell.

Is there some way I can tell the differnce between Hornets, Wasps and Yellow Jackets? I due to learn this.

[Dave Munger]

One time I woke up in the middle of the night with a moth in my ear. It sounded like a bee, freaked me out.

[Susan]

I was attacked by a swarm of wasps when i was a kid, they were in one of those old clothesline poles and i decided to put a stick in it. Brilliant eh?

Funny u mention this, the other day my mother called and said that she went out to the hottub and got stung by a bee. Then later she went back out and another stung her. Then she realized (what i had pointed out weeks prior) the bee's were going inside the hottub. So my dad sprayed the area but they kept coming. It dawned on him they are probably building a hive in there so he decided to take a wood panel off and spray inside.

My mother was having a conniption because she hears stories about how one hive can harbor 30,000 bee's and she envisioned Attack of the Killer Bee's happening in front of her eyes. Panel by Panel he slowly sprayed, would back off, until all the panels were removed from the hot tub. They found a honecomb a foot long loaded with eggs. My dad hated to throw it away, he read up something about how the workers go out in the daytime and then come back later...and how they'd come back to find they were evicted.

Then by chance a few nights later i was reading the Uncle John's bathroom reader and there was a little factoid about how bee's had like 5,000 nostrils and could smell an apple tree 2 miles away. neat huh?

[Mr_Vindictive]

Susan

Full of random info.  Just like myself.  LOL

:o)

[Scott]

yep, I was feeling strange. To many Bee Movies I suppose. : )

[Scott]

I remember getting stung by a bee when I was about 5 years old while playing in a park in Cayuga Lake in Upstate New York and another time after a church softball game were I was stung in the thigh while sitting in my car. Nothing special in the horror aspect like driving with bees on the face.  Both of my bites came as an unseen surprise.

I remember  hearing a story of a truck driver who was killed while driving down a road and trying to defend himself against a bee causing him to crash. .



Post Edited (09-01-04 21:27)

[Ash]

Other than The Swarm, what other killer bee movies are out there?

[Scott]

Inavasion of the B-Girls and Wasp Woman,

[Scott]

Yes, actually that was a recent picture Dave. I'm also running for President of the HAIR CLUB FOR MEN.

[Susan]

Bee's are smart, they're plotting world domination. It's always the ones you least expect. I saw a documentary on how a bee finds food, flies back to the hive and shakes it's ass as the entire swarm gathers around all abuzz. After the gyration frenzy ends, the bee basically communicated to the entire hive the exact pinpoint geographical location of the food source, latitude, longitute, time, space, continueum.....

we're just one ass shaking away from a coup