The Year of the Wasp(s) & A Treat for Animal Lovers

Beware the dangers of harvest time—plus fun with chickens…

Oct 10, 2023

Hello, and welcome to October!

From my September post, you’ve probably guessed I think about bees a lot. We’ve always aimed for a “pollinator-forward” garden, and I tend to keep an anxious eye on the native bees around our place.

**Wasps** swarming around our grapes this week—this was as close as I dared to take a pic!

I also love watching bees generally—plus I’m always learning interesting stuff and getting inspired by Erin’s beekeeping stories over at The Suburb Farm!

But as you see, we have a wasp situation.

Of course, most outdoorsy folks know wasps aren’t actually bees, even if they’re related. If you don’t mind me geeking out a bit, after I did a little research, I learned bees and wasps (plus ants) belong to the same scientific order (Hymenoptera).

But bees are in the Apidae family, while wasps, including paper wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets are in the Vespidae.

Living in the woods, besides the native bees, we have a lot of bugs of all kinds around, from ladybugs, ants, tiny flying insects and garden pests—and especially wasps. And since wasps eat insects, they’ve got an abundance of food at our place.

I also learned why wasps thrive in the woods… The queens chew wood fiber into pulp, which they use to build their nests!

Unfortunately, since we raise lots of cane berries, blueberries and tree fruit, by early fall, there’s plenty of late-ripening fruit hanging on the shrubs/trees or falling to the ground… And as it decomposes, we’re creating oodles of supplemental wasp treats.

Feeding on the sugars in the fermenting fruit, wasps actually get a little “drunk.” So basically, our acreage is wasp nirvana.

Still, the 2023 growing season at the Little Farm has been one for the records. In fact, these past two weeks it’s been downright hazardous around here.

Now John and I, in our 17+ years in the Foothills, have pretty much co-existed peacefully with our resident wasps. I mean, there’s so many! But sometimes you have to draw the line.

I first noticed we had a real problem around July. One sunny afternoon, I saw a few wasps flying around the eaves of our shop. Nothing new there—paper wasps settle up there every year. Looking more closely, though, I saw double, or even triple the number of nests we usually get.

black and brown wall decor — Photo by Bee Safe on Unsplash

Naturally, that means double, or triple the number of wasps flying around those nests.

After I showed them to John—he’s the official pest eradicator around here—he dutifully fetched the long pole he uses to knock down the nests. And my sweetheart, never one to shirk his duty, began wielding his pole immediately—right in the middle of the day.

“Wait!” I called frantically, envisioning swarms of wasps descending on both of us.“Time out! You can’t do that until tonight!”

Evenings are when wasps dial down their activity, and return to their nests for the night. Also, they’re slow to react, so that’s when you can jump in and destroy their dwellings.

John got back on the job that evening, and knocked down about half of them. “I don’t think we should get them all,” he said, “and upset the natural balance of things.”

I agreed, trying to keep in mind the wasps (hopefully) take care of our peskiest pests. But once I noticed all the nests and their inhabitants, I saw them everywhere. Including a giant hornet’s nest on the carport ceiling.

At a recent neighbors’ gathering, all of us were waving hornets away from our food. Everyone at the table agreed the wasp situation was crazy this year. One neighbor recommended a pesticide spray.

“You can shoot at the nests from 10 or 12 feet away,” he said a little gleefully. Since he and his wife have a lot of outbuildings at their place, all with steel roofs that get good and hot in the daytime—wasps do like a nice warm home—he’d been using the spray liberally. “The wasps are killed instantly.”

I didn’t blame him for resorting to pesticides—they were hosting a big family reunion in a couple of weeks, and having a gazebo full of hornets attacking everyone’s plates of brisket would surely make their visitors flee.

It goes without saying John and I don’t use stuff like that. Yet as late summer rolled on, the situation deteriorated: yellow jackets began swarming around our Asian pear tree. Which this year, was positively dripping with fruit—hundreds of pears.

Lots of noshes for wasps…and the pears on the ground were fermenting nicely!

Then the paper wasps spread out—and began building their nests under our house eaves. I wasn’t surprised…until I saw wasps flying in and out of the grill of our heat pump unit. They had obviously built a nest in the cubbyholes inside!

Unfortunately, the heat pump is only one foot from our tiny backyard deck where, on the rare sunny mornings I have extra time, I sit and drink my tea.

Correction: where I used to sit. This summer, there was no outdoor tea drinking for me.

I did get some satisfaction the day the temperature climbed to around 90, and John and I finally turned on the A/C. Once that big fan inside the unit started whirling, I do believe that was the end of whatever nest(s) was inside there.

How did I know? Because there were a whole lot of ticked-off acting wasps buzzing around the grill!

I mentioned wasps of all kinds feed on insects—then I learned they actually provide an “ecological service”: eating copious amounts of garden pests. They even bring caterpillar larvae back to their nests to feed their young.

So given the benefits (and aside from the invasive wasp species that prey on honeybees), ideally, I suppose one should learn to tolerate a certain number of wasps around your home.

But then two weeks ago, I discovered wasps weren’t the only ones who liked Asian pears…

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The Return of the Bear

Glancing casually out the kitchen window one afternoon, I saw an unwelcome sight… A large black mass—

Our neighborhood bear was back in the garden!

Seeing him a short distance from our Asian pear tree, I yelled, “John!”

As John tore out of his office, the bear heard me too. It turned and vamoosed out of sight.

“The bear’s back,” I told him breathlessly, “trying to get the Asian pears!”

“I wonder how he got in,” said John, already jamming his feet into his shoes. As I watched from the window, he crossed the yard, looked around the vicinity of the tree, then came back inside.

“He’s gone,” he said. “The fences looked fine.” It’s true, John’s nearly 7-foot deer fencing was sturdy. But he couldn’t investigate further—he had to head into town for a meeting.

Not surprisingly, the bear had been drawn to all that fruit. But he hadn’t been able to get to the tree. It’s surrounded by 4-foot steer wire and separate from the rest of the garden. (Long story: John had created a very complicated orchard fencing arrangement because of our hens…but that’s for another day.)

Anyway, when I caught the bear in our yard, it was probably trying to figure out how to get through that fence and over to the fruit. As soon as I could, I donned my work clothes and headed outside. If the bear hadn’t crashed down John’s sturdy fence, how had it gotten in?

Well, my brief inspection revealed the bear had gotten in the same way he’d done all the other times…Simply muscling his way through the fence.

It had pulled apart a section of fence where the poultry fencing at the bottom half of the fence (to keep out rabbits, which has never worked) is joined with the steer wire that makes up the higher half of the fence.

Actually, where it used to be joined.

In any event, the Asian pears needed to be picked immediately. Never mind that John had already harvested bushels of fruit already. But more and more overripe fruit was falling to the ground, and again, quickly fermenting, so yellow jackets were all over the place.

Well, wasps or no, the fruit needed to be removed from the vicinity. I got a sack and grabbed a pear. That merest shake brought down a shower of fruit, and I began to see the challenge in front of me. I reached into a branch for another pear and felt a stab.

Oh, NO! I dropped the pear pulled my hand out. Sure enough, there was a yellow jacket attached to my index finger, stinger firmly inserted! Man, that HURT!

Racing toward the house, I shook my hand, trying to dislodge the critter, but it grimly hung on. I finally was able to brush it off, then got inside and scrabbled around the bathroom for a Benadryl pill.

I found a three-year old packet of pills and took one. Then dashed to the kitchen for a baking soda poultice.

The Benadryl probably helped the swelling…though as my dad used to say, it hurt like the Dickens!

Trailing bits of baking soda from my finger, I got back outside and did a homesteady/rough patchwork kind of repair on the fence.

But I was SO done with that pear-picking job!

The next day, John was home, and he headed out to finish picking the pears. Within a few moments, he got stung on the hand. Then a minute later, behind his ear! “Well guess what,” he said, coming inside for a Benadryl. “We’ve got a yellow jacket nest under the tree.”

Until then, I didn’t know that yellow jackets build their nests in the ground. They can be hard to detect (as John found out); often, you can hardly see the hole even if you’re looking for it. “I put a rock over the hole,” John added, sounding quite jolly, “and boy were they mad!”

You may have already guessed he’s a philosophical kind of person, which comes in handy for the homesteady life.

And I, on the other hand, am not. That same day, my hand swelled up, red and angry looking, and the whole area itched so badly I though I would scratch the skin off.

John had far less itching, and the sting sites were only a raised dot instead of swollen. Happily, four or five days later the bites finally stopped itching for both of us.

Back to the bear: In a way, it was probably good that we discovered we couldn’t relax our guard. Because just this afternoon, that darn bear inside the fence again!

He was looking at the Asian pear tree, even though all the fruit was gone.

Before I could get my shoes on, he turned around as if disappointed, and skedaddled out of sight. Later, I saw it had torn apart my repair…i.e., my paltry human attempt to control his comings and goings.

Clearly, John and I have a lot more fencing improvements in our future.

At this moment, the grapes we never eat because the jays punch holes in them, have wasps swarming the fruit. There’s a pleasantly beery aroma around the grapevines; I imagine wasps are probably well inebriated.

Fingers crossed they’re getting mellow, rather than cranky, from the alcohol.

The one sticky point is that the grapevines are right in the middle of the yard, only about eight feet from our main entryway—so we have to pass them dozens of times every day.

All I can do is remind myself: wasps eat pests, wasps eat pests…

In any event, it all goes with the homesteady life. John and I often quote Gilda Radner from the early SNL days: As Rosanne Rosanna-danna used to say, “There’s always somethin’.”

Any waspy experiences you care to share?

This Little Farm Life with Susan Colleen Browne

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