Engineering Pest Dispatch (was:Re: [BC] Engineering feats of note)

[Ron Castro]

Remind me never to take a job in NC :-) !  Here in northern CA, paper wasps 
and yellow jackets are fairly common, but I rarely see hornets, wood-borers 
and only a few big bumble bees, none of which ever seem to be very 
aggressive. We have some rattle snakes, black widows, brown spiders, 
tarantulas and scorpions, but I have only seen one black widow, and two dead 
scorpions.  Pretty lucky, I guess!  Deer-tics and Lyme disease are more of a 
concern around here.

I think now is the time of year to get the wasp and yellow jacket queens 
with traps, before they get their first brood going.  I've set out a number 
of traps, but haven't caught anything yet, although I've seen a few flying 
around and killed two or three in my back yard.  Maybe it's still a little 
too early in the year out here.

Ron Castro
Chief Technical Officer
Results Radio, LLC


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lamar Owen" <lowen at pari.edu>
To: "Broadcast Radio Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2005 8:47 AM
Subject: Engineering Pest Dispatch (was:Re: [BC] Engineering feats of note)


> On Friday 20 May 2005 20:10, Ron Castro wrote:
>> You sound like you need a case of Wasp & Hornet spray!  I can't say I've
>> been stung by any of them, and I hope don't anytime soon...
>
> The scary part is that I have seen some of the B&W baldface hornets shrug 
> off
> the RAID hornet spray like it was water.  Ended up getting them with some
> freeze spray (chewing gum remover) with a long-reach straw.  At night, of
> course, with red lights instead of white (the white will annoy them, and 
> in
> order to get close enough to do the freeze spray you must not annoy 
> them!).
> The only time to effectively kill them is when the queen is building the
> nest; afterwards it can become downright dangerous.
>
> I have purchased some commercial hornet spray in the past that killed
> everything sprayed with it (including a couple of mice and a large rat (I
> used spray masks when using it, just like the directions on the can 
> said)),
> but that stuff isn't sold anymore (joining the really effective pesticides
> like chlorodane and diazinon, neither of which is available anymore.  The
> strongest thing you can buy these days is malathion, and it's probably on 
> the
> endangered pesticide list by now; unfortunately malathion doesn't work 
> really
> well on the ants around here).
>
> I have seen many bumblebees and wood borers (looks like a larger 
> bumblebee,
> but eats wood like a carpenter ant) shrug off all manners of wasp and 
> hornet
> spray.  Wood borers are best killed with a BB gun (catch them while 
> they're
> tunnelling, and drive a BB through them in the tunnel).  The cheap Red 
> Ryder
> type of spring-piston is the safest for this activity, but still wear
> ANSI-rated safety glasses when doing this; I do.  Get the end of the 
> barrel
> as close as possible, and watch for ricochet.
>
> To knock down a wasp or bee that is, say, in your office at work (I have
> killed three queen yellow jackets this week here, one of which flew out of
> the A/C vent into my office, and the other two were in the library inside 
> the
> building!) some stiff hairspray or similar can knock them down long enough
> for you to step on them.  I have killed a yellowjacket with hairspray, but
> the amount needed is quite large.  Ammonia-base glass cleaner also works 
> as
> an effective knockdown, particularly with bumblebees.  However, I try not 
> to
> kill bumblebees since they cross-pollenate, unless it's inside the house 
> and
> mad.  And I leave honeybees alone completely; they're too useful. 
> Honeybees
> can be smoked out, and if a swarm comes you can call a beekeeper who might
> even pay you to get the swarm.  But wood borers are way too destructive to
> leave alone, and, at least around here, there are so many yellowjackets 
> and
> baldface hornets that getting rid of the ones near the house, transmitter
> site, etc, isn't going to even knock a dent into their population.
>
> What we have to watch out for around here are the copperheads and 
> rattlesnakes
> more than anything else.  I came across a nice large copperhead one day 
> here
> in a doorway, and used a brass headed hammer to dispatch.  There's enough
> blacksnakes and king snakes around here to handle the rats and mice; and
> while copperhead bites aren't usually too dangerous (unlike a rattlesnake,
> which can be deadly) it's better safe than sorry.
> -- 
> Lamar Owen
> Director of Information Technology
> Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
> 1 PARI Drive
> Rosman, NC  28772
> (828)862-5554
> www.pari.edu
>
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