European Wasps

Wayne,

Camped at Wilson's Prom last year and had a plague of these things around. I got stung once and it was one of the most painful 'bites' or 'stings' I have ever had....much worse than a bullant.

What worried me most was my little kids. Prompted me to go out and have a look at an 'eating tent'....one of those made of fly screen as they seem to be more active when the food comes out. Haven't bought one yet and don't really like the idea of them, but may have to have one up my sleeve for such situations.

Wish there was a better solution.

Cheers,

Mark

We have found that the best thing is to ignore them. They seem to react to adrenalin which is increased when you try to swat them away through fear.
We were camped in Butcher Country some time ago & there literally hundreds of them, by ignoring them nobody got stung.

In reply to them killing other insects, overnight we had Bogong moths & in the morning they were hanging under our CT awning, just after sun up the wasps attacked & killed them all!

We were camped at Anglers Reach near Adaminaby about 4 yrs ago, and we had the same problem and it was around this time of year.
They seemed to hover around as soon as the smell of food started in the mornings or whenever it was meal time. At one stage we had to cook lunch inside the CT. Spoke to a local there at the time and she said it happens every year about that time leading up to the snow season, onviously the little buggers are stocking up.!
As someone said previously, just try to ignore them (dont swat) and you wont get stung.




cheers ...Unc

On a slightly different tack, we used to have a couple of plastic caps that fitted over a drink can, to protect the contents from wasps, etc.

Apparently the wasps are attracted to anything "sweet" and could crawl in to the open can. When you pick it up to take a drink you risked a mouthful of wasp.
The spout on the cap had a built-in grill to stop the wasp from entering and if one was present, was easily noticed.
Geez, would hate to be stung in the mouth, or trachea by one.

SWMBO has the occasional Jack Daniels or Jim Beam which has coke in it.
Me, I just drink beer out of a can:-)

Haven't seen them in shops lately and we have "lost" our original ones.


Bill.

Best said. Leave then alone and they will leave you alone. The euopean wasp unlike the bee can sting you more than once. Nasty little things with Hawthorne shirts.

We camped on the Ovens River just out of Bright over Easter and the wasps were the worst I have ever seen. I was told that they were building their nests in the river banks. Decent rain and higher river levels will take care of these nests in due course.

Cheers

http://www.flickr.com/photos/76729200@N00/

We were at Walhalla yesterday and saw them the photos are at the link.

I am not sure if they are European wasps or native ones I need to check.

The Victoria Museum says European wasps do not look hairy

and this one does have some hair: http://www.flickr.com/photos/76729200@N00/4496729192/

Regardless they were a nuisance and obviously in plague proportions.

I had never seen wasps eating bugs off car bumper bars etc before. As soon as a car parked they were all over the front feeding on the dead bugs.

Very strange behaviour. We sat at a picnic table in the open and did not have a problem. Those having lunch under shelters were pestered by them.

Hi Wayne

There's a few around , some were at our place over easter for our camping weekend. They had a 30mm dia in the ground and were flying in and out, put some petrol down it which ruined the party then filled in the hole.

They do go more for some food than others , being mostly vegetarian seems to help as they don't bother us and they don't seem to go after our chardonay either - perhaps because we mix it with water - mind you no one else at camp went for it either.

Yeh, wasps are interesting litttle blighters!

When we lived in the UK we often had barbeques in the garden. My wife would get everything ready, and the food would be put out on the garden table ready for me to cook.

So we'd sit around having a few beers while everyone turned up. One day we noticed that there was a series of wasps coming to the table and landing on the chicken and other meats that had been wrapped in clingfilm. So we watched them a liitle more closely, to find that each wasp came down, landed on the meat and then cut a hole in the clingfilm, before addressing itself to the meat underneath. 5 minutes of cutting generally yielded a piece of meat about half the size of the wasp, which they would straddle before flying off.

We also used to do a great deal of fishing in the UK, where a popular bait is gentles, or blowfly larvae. If we left the bait tin open the wasps would come in, straddle a live gentle (not far off the same size as the wasp) and carry them off.

We never researched what sort of wasps they were - hairy or otherwise.

LES