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Wasps

They pollinate some flowers and plants, eat smaller creatures, and provide food to loads of small mammals and birds.
A big part of the ecology web, and really needed with the modern mass use of pesticides.
It isn't that long ago that you used to have to clear your screen of bugs every ten miles in summer, the M55 used to be awful for bugs, now you hardly get any.
Some are social and live in paper nests, some live totally solitary lives, often living in little holes in the ground, waiting to sting the idiot gardener with no gloves on, and some live individual lives in small groups, only using the others for childminding and breeding.
Well over one thousand species in this country alone.
I get stung two or three times a year, about the same frequency as I hit cat turd with the strimmer.
I prefer wasps.

Thanks for the reply :) you’ve failed to convince me of their place though
 
I could tell a tale about how wasps have been deliberately used by staff to the detriment of guests. There's also a funny one about a squirrel too (but the staff had no involvement in that one)!

On a serious note, there is not a great deal any park can do about wasps. They are everywhere and they like particularly like sweet / sugary foods - which falls slap-bang into the category of a lot of the food items sold at parks (possibly slightly less now due to the fizzy drink sugar tax). I know Alton Towers put wasp traps up throughout the park - which are fairly effective (if you've ever emptied one late-season you'll see how many wasps they caught). That said, you only have to smell the rather pungent aroma of "bin juice" on warmer days when emptying queueline litter bins to see why the wasps are there en-masse.
 
It only takes someone to spill a sticky drink on the table or floor and then you'll have lots of wasps coming to investigate. Ideally the tables and floors need to be washed immediately if there's a spill, but it's rare to ever see the tables get cleaned properly.
 
What makes that ^ even funnier, is that the only time I have been stung was when one landed on my face, and I froze.

Could be worse though. When I was a kid, out in portugal, the toddler son of a family friend decided to pull down his pants and urinate on a wasp nest...

..... The resulting screams still haunt me to this day.
 
During routine excavation work...

Our specialists uncovered an uncompromising, army of evil from hell itself...

An uncountable, invincible, unemotional, ruthless horde...

They sweep over over the land, decimating all who are in their way...

You cannot reason with them, you cannot defeat them, you cannot escape them, you cannot outrun them...

They breed, they swarm, they multiply...

They are ruthless, they are evil, they conquer all, and you will cower before them.

Sent by an all powerful queen, that resides in a nefarious nest in the depths of hell itself!

Merlin Entertainments presents... The Swarm, The Black Hole... Only at the Alton Towers Resort.
 
Now that reminds me, I saw an interesting YT vid the other day about the "wars" that ant colonies wage against other ants, or pretty much anything else that gets in their way.
Top comment (at the time) was along the lines of:
Humans: "We don't like these creatures! We must wipe them out!"
Army Ants: "Hold my leaf..."
 
Far better is...

Back in 2001 when McDonalds served bacon rolls in polystyrene boxes, it was very easy to consume your bacon roll and then attract two or three wasps into the empty container (thanks to the ketchup) and close it fast. You could keep these wasps entertained during your break by shaking the closed container, making them "happy". As you returned to your ride from break, you'd find a suitably nice guest to offer a free bacon roll to & hand them the container with happy wasps contained therein.

This never happened... that often.
 
During routine excavation work...

Our specialists uncovered an uncompromising, army of evil from hell itself...

An uncountable, invincible, unemotional, ruthless horde...

They sweep over over the land, decimating all who are in their way...

You cannot reason with them, you cannot defeat them, you cannot escape them, you cannot outrun them...

They breed, they swarm, they multiply...

They are ruthless, they are evil, they conquer all, and you will cower before them.

Sent by an all powerful queen, that resides in a nefarious nest in the depths of hell itself!

Merlin Entertainments presents... The Swarm, The Black Hole... Only at the Alton Towers Resort.

Routine excavation work — that’s always made me laugh? What’s it mean? Digging up the weeds?
 
I was at Flamingoland for my Scarb + York holiday with a disabled group ‘Chrysalis Holidays’ and there were hundreds of yellow jackets everywhere at lunch time. The best way is to move or not eat anything too “sweet” or “sugary” and have insect repellent with you like I did as it might help.


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Bit extreme but could try this
GM-BUBBLE.jpg
 
A biblical plague of wasps around us today at the welcom-inn. Much alcohol was consumed. Wasp in my mouth at one stage (no joke) spat it out and drank up. No ambulance was required.
 
Do they still sell them refillable drinks with the wasp-retardant? I had one of those neck hanging plastic bottles in 2015 on my first day on July 29th, they were some how useful.


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Around the park there seemed to be some kind of wasp traps. Wasn’t sure if they were the usual water hanger things you usually see about that just attracted them but there were many dead wasps in them.
 
Forget the wasps, I'm more worried about the noisy school kids running around everywhere, they kind of ruin the piece and quiet where ever I go out at the moment.

This is how our local zoo deals with wasps, despite their efforts, there are still plenty of wasps around. I just leave the wasps alone and they never trouble me.

 
We usually try to find somewhere to eat away from other people and close to water, iirc wasps don't like water so will avoid it if possible, we were in a queue on Sunday and the wasps were going after the woman and her kid in front of us and she was getting quiet hysterical, eventually I got fedup and told her to put the top on her kids Coke bottle and they'd go away, got told to mind my own business (this should be in the pet hate thread so I can complain about ingenious bints) but she did and after a few minutes the wasps got bored and went after someone else.

Maybe these places should have big signs saying "if you don't want to be harassed by wasps, don't eat or drink sweet stuff out in the open".

I would surmise that this should be common sense, but given what I've seen, heard and been told about over this summer period, I'm no longer suprised that it isn't.
 
Strong perfume, aftershave and body sprays attract them as well.
September brings the aggressive, drunken, suicidal wasps, slow enough to swat.
But watch it if you miss!
Inquest of a poor bloke who died from a wasp sting last October in the paper this morning.
 
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