Which Wasp Sting is the Worst?

a reply to: GuitaristRob

We had sweat bees in the yard a few years ago. They are normally not aggressive, but will fly at you to sip sweat and will sting if pinched. We discovered that my husband is very allergic to their stings when he got accosted while mowing. He pinched several by mistake and they got agitated when he mowed over their nest.

Maybe that's what you have?

originally posted by: GuitaristRob
a reply to: EdumakatedI don't think so. The yellow jackets I usually see are much bigger here where i live.

Those are definitely yellow jackets.

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob
a reply to: EdumakatedI don't think so. The yellow jackets I usually see are much bigger here where i live.

Those are definitely yellow jackets.

I guess you are not that Edumakated on them then. These are less than half the size of yellow jackets. And also the pic for some reason makes them appear more yellow than what they look like with the naked eye. When looking at them they are more black with yellow highlights. And I have experienced yellow jackets and they twice the size of these. I also know the difference between yellow jackets and sweat bee's.

These are something different.

originally posted by: GuitaristRob

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob
a reply to: EdumakatedI don't think so. The yellow jackets I usually see are much bigger here where i live.

Those are definitely yellow jackets.

I guess you are not that Edumakated on them then. These are less than half the size of yellow jackets. And also the pic for some reason makes them appear more yellow than what they look like with the naked eye. When looking at them they are more black with yellow highlights. And I have experienced yellow jackets and they twice the size of these. I also know the difference between yellow jackets and sweat bee's.

These are something different.

You pic is kind of blurry, but they look like yellow jackets. Only thing I can think of is a sweat bee, but look too big to be a sweat bee.

O'well, agree to disagree

a reply to: BerkshireEntity

Mud daubers can sting, but usually don't. They're pretty docile, less aggressive than some bees even, and don't do anything to defend their nests. They're the only wasp that doesn't get immediately killed in this household. Their venom is pretty mild, so unless you have an allergy, you might not even notice it.

originally posted by: cmdrkeenkid
a reply to: BerkshireEntity

Mud daubers can sting, but usually don't. They're pretty docile, less aggressive than some bees even, and don't do anything to defend their nests. They're the only wasp that doesn't get immediately killed in this household. Their venom is pretty mild, so unless you have an allergy, you might not even notice it.

Yeah, they are pretty harmless. If you crack their nest open, a bunch of dead spiders will fall out. They paralyze spiders with their sting and bring them back to their nests for their larvae to feed on.

Here we have Cicada Killers. They are massive and look like Asian Hornets. Pretty docile but will scare the beejuzus out of you. Sound like little RC helicopters. So big you can literally see the "rotor wash" from their wings when they are low to the ground flying.

The Schmidt Sting Pain Index has the following as being the highest pain level:

Pain Level 4
Bullet Ant, Tarantula Hawk , Warrior Wasp

en.wikipedia.org...

For your viewing enjoyment Coyote Peterson got stung by each on Brave Wilderness.. lol

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob
a reply to: EdumakatedI don't think so. The yellow jackets I usually see are much bigger here where i live.

Those are definitely yellow jackets.

I guess you are not that Edumakated on them then. These are less than half the size of yellow jackets. And also the pic for some reason makes them appear more yellow than what they look like with the naked eye. When looking at them they are more black with yellow highlights. And I have experienced yellow jackets and they twice the size of these. I also know the difference between yellow jackets and sweat bee's.

These are something different.

You pic is kind of blurry, but they look like yellow jackets. Only thing I can think of is a sweat bee, but look too big to be a sweat bee.

O'well, agree to disagree

Well here's the thing too. Someone else posted about underground hornets. I had a bout with them before and they was tiny like these also but I remember them being black with tan stripes. But I been stung also by yellow jackets before and it swelled my eye shut. But these lil devils sting was way more painful.

originally posted by: GuitaristRob

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob
a reply to: EdumakatedI don't think so. The yellow jackets I usually see are much bigger here where i live.

Those are definitely yellow jackets.

I guess you are not that Edumakated on them then. These are less than half the size of yellow jackets. And also the pic for some reason makes them appear more yellow than what they look like with the naked eye. When looking at them they are more black with yellow highlights. And I have experienced yellow jackets and they twice the size of these. I also know the difference between yellow jackets and sweat bee's.

These are something different.

You pic is kind of blurry, but they look like yellow jackets. Only thing I can think of is a sweat bee, but look too big to be a sweat bee.

O'well, agree to disagree

Well here's the thing too. Someone else posted about underground hornets. I had a bout with them before and they was tiny like these also but I remember them being black with tan stripes. But I been stung also by yellow jackets before and it swelled my eye shut. But these lil devils sting was way more painful.

What part of country are you in?

I am from south and midwest. Southern yellow jackets are ground yellow jackets. They almost always build their nest in the ground. However, there are also eastern yellow jackets that can build in attics and other elevated areas. Eastern yellow jackets are not as aggressive (all things considered) as the southern variety.

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob
a reply to: EdumakatedI don't think so. The yellow jackets I usually see are much bigger here where i live.

Those are definitely yellow jackets.

I guess you are not that Edumakated on them then. These are less than half the size of yellow jackets. And also the pic for some reason makes them appear more yellow than what they look like with the naked eye. When looking at them they are more black with yellow highlights. And I have experienced yellow jackets and they twice the size of these. I also know the difference between yellow jackets and sweat bee's.

These are something different.

You pic is kind of blurry, but they look like yellow jackets. Only thing I can think of is a sweat bee, but look too big to be a sweat bee.

O'well, agree to disagree

Well here's the thing too. Someone else posted about underground hornets. I had a bout with them before and they was tiny like these also but I remember them being black with tan stripes. But I been stung also by yellow jackets before and it swelled my eye shut. But these lil devils sting was way more painful.

What part of country are you in?

I am from south and midwest. Southern yellow jackets are ground yellow jackets. They almost always build their nest in the ground. However, there are also eastern yellow jackets that can build in attics and other elevated areas. Eastern yellow jackets are not as aggressive (all things considered) as the southern variety.

Mid Michigan. And like I mentioned they had a nest in my shed. Was gray like a paper type wasp nest. Similar to what a yellow jacket nest would be too. But like I said I have encountered YJ before and they are over twice the size as these. I did a image search for YJ on google and there are a lot of varieties of them, but again nothing that looks like these hornets? Like I said these really small lil devils. I'm not going to say they are not in the family of YJ anymore after my search. But what exactly what they are i would like to know. The raid hornet and wasp spray did not even affect them, lol

originally posted by: GuitaristRob

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob
a reply to: EdumakatedI don't think so. The yellow jackets I usually see are much bigger here where i live.

Those are definitely yellow jackets.

I guess you are not that Edumakated on them then. These are less than half the size of yellow jackets. And also the pic for some reason makes them appear more yellow than what they look like with the naked eye. When looking at them they are more black with yellow highlights. And I have experienced yellow jackets and they twice the size of these. I also know the difference between yellow jackets and sweat bee's.

These are something different.

You pic is kind of blurry, but they look like yellow jackets. Only thing I can think of is a sweat bee, but look too big to be a sweat bee.

O'well, agree to disagree

Well here's the thing too. Someone else posted about underground hornets. I had a bout with them before and they was tiny like these also but I remember them being black with tan stripes. But I been stung also by yellow jackets before and it swelled my eye shut. But these lil devils sting was way more painful.

What part of country are you in?

I am from south and midwest. Southern yellow jackets are ground yellow jackets. They almost always build their nest in the ground. However, there are also eastern yellow jackets that can build in attics and other elevated areas. Eastern yellow jackets are not as aggressive (all things considered) as the southern variety.

Mid Michigan. And like I mentioned they had a nest in my shed. Was gray like a paper type wasp nest. Similar to what a yellow jacket nest would be too. But like I said I have encountered YJ before and they are over twice the size as these. I did a image search for YJ on google and there are a lot of varieties of them, but again nothing that looks like these hornets? Like I said these really small lil devils. I'm not going to say they are not in the family of YJ anymore after my search. But what exactly what they are i would like to know. The raid hornet and wasp spray did not even affect them, lol

Still sounds like yellow jackets. They can build them in sheds and they make grey paper nests typically if they build it in a area that is exposed. It wouldn't be a sweat bee as they don't build paper nests.

Every year about this time of year we get wasps all over the outside of our house. Sometimes when I get home in the late afternoons every square foot of the siding will have 3-4 wasps on it. Just like crazy huge numbers of wasps. They will sting, and boy is it painful when they do, but they're not aggressive at all. They'll fly around you and bump into you, but won't sting. They'll only sting if you step on one, or put your hand down on one, or something like that. It's weird they show up all at once like they do. They do get inside the house, but for some reason only go in the basement.

I took some closeup pictures of the wasps and showed them to a bug guy. He swears up and down they are paper wasps, but we can't find any nests...at all. Not even tiny ones. So then I took some of the wasps to him, and he confirmed (at least in his mind) they are paper wasps, but said there should be nests within 2-300 feet. Well, there aren't any, and we've looked.

The bug guy was pretty interested in what we were finding and wanted to know if he could come out and see for himself (I don't think he believed us about there not being nests). He came out and sure enough, lots and lots of wasps, but no nests. He wanted to come out and bring some graduate students from CSU. So we agreed, and they spent a couple consecutive days out here studying them.

We have a big cliff on our property, probably about 80 feet tall and nearly vertical which drops off into a creek. After considerable experiments the group finally concluded the wasps are nesting in the ground, but on the crevices in the cliff. I guess this is pretty unusual, and they now think it may be some new genus (???) of paper wasp.

They usually show up in the late summer (like now) when it finally starts to cool off considerably at night and is still very warm during the day. They're usually only around for a couple of weeks, then they just vanish. The other weird thing is, some years we get tens of thousands of them, and the next year we will get none.

Like I say, they're not aggressive at all, and rarely sting, but for anyone who is even the least bit "buggy" they'll definitely freak people out. We lived in the house for probably 6-7 years before the first time it happened. Since then it's been off and on. None so far this year, but I'm betting we'll start seeing them pretty quick here.

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: GuitaristRob
a reply to: EdumakatedI don't think so. The yellow jackets I usually see are much bigger here where i live.

Those are definitely yellow jackets.

I guess you are not that Edumakated on them then. These are less than half the size of yellow jackets. And also the pic for some reason makes them appear more yellow than what they look like with the naked eye. When looking at them they are more black with yellow highlights. And I have experienced yellow jackets and they twice the size of these. I also know the difference between yellow jackets and sweat bee's.

These are something different.

You pic is kind of blurry, but they look like yellow jackets. Only thing I can think of is a sweat bee, but look too big to be a sweat bee.

O'well, agree to disagree

Well here's the thing too. Someone else posted about underground hornets. I had a bout with them before and they was tiny like these also but I remember them being black with tan stripes. But I been stung also by yellow jackets before and it swelled my eye shut. But these lil devils sting was way more painful.

What part of country are you in?

I am from south and midwest. Southern yellow jackets are ground yellow jackets. They almost always build their nest in the ground. However, there are also eastern yellow jackets that can build in attics and other elevated areas. Eastern yellow jackets are not as aggressive (all things considered) as the southern variety.

Mid Michigan. And like I mentioned they had a nest in my shed. Was gray like a paper type wasp nest. Similar to what a yellow jacket nest would be too. But like I said I have encountered YJ before and they are over twice the size as these. I did a image search for YJ on google and there are a lot of varieties of them, but again nothing that looks like these hornets? Like I said these really small lil devils. I'm not going to say they are not in the family of YJ anymore after my search. But what exactly what they are i would like to know. The raid hornet and wasp spray did not even affect them, lol

Still sounds like yellow jackets. They can build them in sheds and they make grey paper nests typically if they build it in a area that is exposed. It wouldn't be a sweat bee as they don't build paper nests.

Ok I'm going to tell you how I know what YJ are. One is going to be a odd story and the other is about how i got stung in the left eye by one.

Ok the first story is when I lived in southern Michigan.
Me and a childhood friend I have known since kindergarten was hanging out at a house I was renting then. It had a pretty good size deck and I spent a lot of time on that deck during the summers cause I had no air conditioning. The deck was old and way gray wood in need of a powerwash and some stain. I would see the YJ chewing off it to make paper to make a nest off somewhere else.

So me and my buddy was hanging out and smoking some fish and meats having a few beers and whatnot.
So all of a sudden on his left index finger this 3/4" size yellow jacket landed. And it appeared to be holding this Florescent tiny green ball that looked like a mini ball of string (Chartreuse like fishing lure's) and suddenly flew away. I noticed it first and we both looked at each other like stand still, don't get stung.

So immediately right after He and I said something like WTF was that. I said something to the contrary like "You mean the green ball or the fact that it landed on your index finger like that? I asked him this cause really I thought I was seeing things, But yes he saw the little tiny green ball too.


Ok the second story of how i got stung in the left eye.
Same home. My father became ill (mid summer) so I went to stay with him for a month or so. After he got better and could be on his own again and returned home again. So when I pulled the screen door open and there was a YJ nest attached to the SD and the actual door, I had torn it open opening the scree door. All i seen was yellow. Yellow, yellow, yellow. like a mist. And bang immediate pain in my left eye.

I went to my garage there and got hornet spray and killed them off real quick as I could feel my eye swelling shut and my vision being impaired by the swelling. So by the time I was done taking care of that nest (it was small, probably relatively new maybe 30-50 larvae combs) and put the spray back into the garage and unlocked the door and entered the house and looked into the mirror and my left eye was swollen shut and the size of a tennis ball.

So anyway I know yellow jackets friend.


ETA; I used the same raid brand spray on both, I still wonder why the RAID did not kill these latest devils?

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

The other weird thing is, some years we get tens of thousands of them, and the next year we will get none.

YESSSSSSSSSSSS
This year we had almost zero mosquitos which is really rare, but instead got thousands of wasps, all different kinds.
You can hardly walk outside without seeing several.
I have a big garden so that doesn't help.

I put up fall decor, and I swear those paperwasps love corn husk like nobody's business. So word of caution, don't got grabbing corn husk all willy nilly or be prepared to be stung.

a reply to: Edumakated

But you didn't read the thread... we aren't talking about threats to the nest.

I did read the thread, it began about wasp aggression as in the OP, and didn't designate aggression to a season, to the nest or otherwise, just that the OP was stung *in the summer*. Summer, not fall.

However, what we are talking about is that in the fall,

The op didn't mention fall, but being stung in the summer. Summer, not fall.

This thread is about wasp aggression, and includes many anecdotes of people's run ins with nests. Have a discussion, don't be a #.

originally posted by: SirHardHarry
a reply to: Edumakated

But you didn't read the thread... we aren't talking about threats to the nest.

I did read the thread, it began about wasp aggression as in the OP, and didn't designate aggression to a season, to the nest or otherwise, just that the OP was stung *in the summer*. Summer, not fall.

However, what we are talking about is that in the fall,

The op didn't mention fall, but being stung in the summer. Summer, not fall.

This thread is about wasp aggression, and includes many anecdotes of people's run ins with nests. Have a discussion, don't be a #.

I don't understand why you are going off on this poster? What poster discussed was on topic. He was talking about yellow jackets and what he knew of them; mostly about how their aggression changes near fall, and I agree it is useful information. What is this poster supposed to talk about, how he was stung and how the pain threshold was? is that your point? I don't look at it as thread drift or off topic, and neither should you imo.

My father and a friend started an outfitting company in Wyoming when I was a kid. They used to guide people out elk hunting in the Wind River Range. Dad was tremendously successful, but I realized later as I grew up that Dad never rode a horse. Everyone else, including me, had horses. He hated horses, just hated them with a purple passion. One time I asked him why he hated horses so much. (?)

Turns out, one time he was on horseback about 20 miles from camp late one afternoon (in bear and cougar country) and his horse stepped in a yellow jacket hole. Yellow jackets flew up the poor horse's nose and stung it repeatedly. The horse (understandably) completely freaked out, reared up and fell over backwards on Dad, then went full-on rodeo, bucking and thrashing around. In the chaos, the horse threw Dad's $5,000 rifle out of the scabbard down onto some rocks and then fell on it, smashing it. The horse then ran off, never to be seen again. Lost the horse, the saddle and all the tack.

Dad was injured and wound up having to hike the 20 miles ba ck to camp (which took that night and the next day) through bear and cougar country with no firearm. He never rode a horse again, ever.

For my part, I felt sorry for all involved. Couldn't blame the horse really, but equally I understood why Dad never liked horses after that.

On kind of a funny note, my horse, Reno, was kind of notorious for being aggressive to everyone but me. He just didn't like people at all, except me for some reason. One time we were standing next to the corrals talking, and Dad was leaning on the corral. Reno snuck up behind him and seriously chomped him on the shoulder! Just Cuz'. My father jumped around cussin' and hollerin' for a good 5 minutes. LOL! He hated horses, Reno knew it, and Reno did what horses do! Then Reno ran over to me like a mischievous little kid and was acting like he wanted me to protect him. I just told him he was on his own on this one, and it was between him and Dad. Off topic, but kind of funny.