We have some little friends making a home near our front door.
We’re leaving them alone and letting them go on about their business, but haven’t informed them of their terrible mistake. They’re building outside our door, but inside the screen door — they’re going to have virtually no protection from the terrible Minnesota winter. I’m figuring they can have their happy late summer endeavor, but later, when temperatures hit the negative 20s, I’ll chip their frozen home free and toss it into a snowdrift a few blocks away.
If that is so then the screen door must be in need of maintenance.
The bigger question is, where will you be living after you burn the house down?
https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-insects/wasps-and-bees#yellowjackets-and-paper-wasps–1464760
European paper wasps become adults in 40 days and in colder climates only the queen will find shelter to overwinter. They’ll be done before you need to dispose of the nest.
The screen door has a small crack in it. I could just repair it and seal them up if I were a sadist.
This mostly seems like a smart place for them? Although they might seal your screen door shut and you don’t notice and when you open it next rrrrip! Unhappiness for both y’all and them. But not related to cold.
I have had mud dauber wasps in my garden, and they don’t seem to come back next year, so the nest just sits there.
Or…this could be the makings of an interesting experiment. At least, that’s what I’d be thinking if I had my own personal spider horde.
I’m with you on spiders, they are OK. But leaving a wasp nest by a screen door? No way for me. You are a better, nicer person :>
I shall assume that you use that door infrequently, as they have been successfully nesting there all summer.
IME, the paper wasps provide a great pest protection service and are welcome residents. They only get aggressive if you disturb their nest which contains the young. Come frost, the colony will die and you can remove the nest. Win/win.
Last year a wasp queen fell into my shoe from a sack of firewood when I was heating the house and stung me several times before I managed to get it off. My leg was swollen for days and hurt for two weeks.
About a month ago I got two stings when mowing the grass because there was a nest where I did not know about it. I still have a visible puncture mark on my forearm. Subsequently, I destroyed the nest without remorse.
Today I got two stings when I was just opening the door to my greenhouse. I haven’t found any nest nearby, and there is nothing in there for them to eat but there are constantly a few of them hovering around the entrance and being a nuisance. I am lucky that within my wide collection of allergies is not one for a wasp sting. It still hurts like hell and takes several days to heal.
And even without an allergy, a sting to the eye or the throat could have really serious consequences.
I am generally a live and let-live person but wasps? Nope. Just like slugs, voles, and mosquitoes, they are my enemies who are killed on sight. I understand they have a role in nature to fulfil but they do not need my garden for that.
“GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER!”
Looks like paper wasps, not yellow jackets. My policy with yellow jackets is all must die.
Those are European paper wasps.
They’ve done the same thing before to our doorway.
They look fierce but I’ve never had any of them sting me.
I just leave them alone and they leave me alone.
@#10 – if they persist in hanging around the door, they either have a nest somewhere you haven’t looked yet, or are scavenging weathered wood that they make their “paper” out of. And if PZ bangs that screen door while going out, and the weather is hot and humid, they WILL go after you. They may be copacetic on cool days, but if it warms up, watch out!
I’m fine with yard hovering sand wasps digging holes in my yard but any activity of colonial wasps or whatever stinging insect hell near my door gets a heavy dosage of death spray. Been stung on the ear before after procrastination. What do the Daleks say?
raven @13: Paper wasps are known for being quite mild mannered as wasps go. They’re not like bald faced hornets or yellowjackets that react quite aggressively at the least disturbance.
I have a nest of yellow jackets that has popped up in one of those plastic composters that you fill up with grass and leaves and keep wet, and it breaks down in the heat of summer. Well, I didn’t keep it wet enough, and now there are a bunch of ornery arthropods buzzing through it. I’m very much not amenable to keeping them around – my dog is intensely energetic, and has already tried to eat several of them (failing each time, but not by much). Moreover, he runs around in that exact area all the time, and either by proximity, or by literally attacking them, it’s only a matter of time before he gets a nasty surprise (and he’s never been stung before, so who knows what kind of reaction he’ll have – I’ve got Benadryl on hand, but I’d prefer to avoid any stings, if possible). The problem is, I’m not sure exactly how to destroy the nest. I can’t use pesticides because it’s a compost heap, and I don’t want to introduce an insecticide to something that will eventually go into my garden (as it could kill a whole host of other important insects…and yes, I know vespids are important too, just not in this exact location). Fire’s also pretty much not an option, as the nest is buried in compost (I have burned paper wasp and bald-faced hornet nests before). I could use a flaming torch to both lure them out at night, and to burn the wings off of any yellow jacket who flies through the flames, but that seems time consuming, as there are probably at least few dozen of them in there by this point. And I’ve already tried water, flooding the compost for a good 10-15 minutes, but it was clearly not long enough…maybe their nest is more waterproof than I imagined. I might try that again on a night where the temperature goes below about 10°C, because I know that this is cool enough that they will not be able to fly for long once they leave the warmer confines of their nest (and I’ll leave a couple decoy lights for them to swarm, to avoid getting attacked myself). The last time I tried water, I did it in the day, and couldn’t get close enough to direct a powerful stream directly at the buried nest itself, but on a cool night, I could see this working.
Am I missing any obvious options here? I would prefer to avoid going in with a pitchfork and just bashing the nest to smithereens…while effective, I think that would leave me vulnerable to being stung (or bitten – and yes, they do also bite in defence of their nest, a fact I learned once when I watched a yellow jacket take a literal chunk out of me…the searing, acute pain was not as bad as a sting, but it lingered for a LOT longer, and was far worse than any deer fly or horsefly bite I have experienced). Does anyone know if smoke pacifies them like it does bees (because if so, I could put some smouldering material in the headspace of the composter with the lid on, and make any subsequent elimination strategies that much safer)?
@17 I believe adding dish soap to the water kills them by lowering the water surface tension causing them to drown. It’s more effective if you can locate a hole in the compost where they are entering and exiting and dump the water in the hole. My wife has been stung a number of times by yellowjackets and has become allergic. We now keep an epi pen on hand.
I used to leave the balcony door open all summer when living in Italy as I had no air conditioning. This meant that one year I shared my bedroom with a small colony of paper wasps. I didn’t bother them and they didn’t bother me.
Here in the UK, I have had two wasp nests in the garden, and both times we just ignored each other for the most part.
Don’t underestimate paper wasps. Three hundred odd people died one time when paper wasps nested in the pitot tubes of an aircraft while it sat on the ground. The next time that plane flew, it crashed because the altimeters and airspeed indicators gave conflicting information to the pilots and they had no way of determining which (if any) were accurate.