Wasp attack - Page 2 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

BatteredBenz · #16 08-03-2015, 04:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drago

I'm allergic to those beasties, gotta keep benedryl all the time. My wife gets totaly freaked when she sees a wasp, screaming at me "KILL IT KILL IT" I have to tell her to calm the hell down I'm the one who has to go to the ER if stung not you. then I got squish it or spray it.

You can use "Computer duster" in an aerosol can to freeze them out of the air in mid flight as well! But they will come back to life in a minute or so. Or you can use women's lacquer type hair spray to encapsulate them in mid flight as well, but they don't recover from that!

t walgamuth · #17 08-03-2015, 04:54 PM

My neighbors had bees when I was a kid. They said no worries about the bees. One day I was walking by (having done it many times previously) and they attacked me. I ran to the neighbors house. My buddies mom pulled stingers out of my head with tweezers. I have always given bees a wide berth since then.

Drago · #18 08-03-2015, 04:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BatteredBenz

You can use "Computer duster" in an aerosol can to freeze them out of the air in mid flight as well! But they will come back to life in a minute or so. Or you can use women's lacquer type hair spray to encapsulate them in mid flight as well, but they don't recover from that!

That sounds like FUN

cmac2012 · #19 08-03-2015, 05:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by t walgamuth

My neighbors had bees when I was a kid. They said no worries about the bees. One day I was walking by (having done it many times previously) and they attacked me. I ran to the neighbors house. My buddies mom pulled stingers out of my head with tweezers. I have always given bees a wide berth since then.

I'm guessing the retained stingers are worse. Not familiar with that, I don't think anyway. I had some nasty boils as a kid, who knows.

I'm a bit chagrined at how ignorant I was about first aid for this. My client gave me some calamine lotion. Whether or not it offered relief I couldn't tell you. No control experiment was run. Was still plenty uncomfortable.

cmac2012 · #20 08-03-2015, 05:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BatteredBenz

As I'm get the runner placed around the spire the first sting hits followed shortly by more. MY climbing partner is belaying me and see's what's happening, starts shouting "just fall I've got you! Jump!" I manage to clip my rope into the biner on the runner and just sort of push myself off the rock face. Initial drop was about 5 foot which can be pretty jarring, even though we were using the original Plymouth GoldLine a hard laid braided rope with lots of elongation built into it. The force of the drop nearly upends my belayer yanking him off his feet, after a moment he's able to regain his position and start to try to lower me but this was at the early days of the figure 8 rappel belay devices and we didn't have one but used a plate with a slot to brake the rope as it ran through a biner. Needless to say the descent was a comedy of trying to unjam the belay while not dropping me all the way down as I was tyring to remain upright and defend against more stings.

Got to the deck scrapped and banged up a bit, stung probably 19 times already and the yellow jackets still in hot pursuit! Now the both of us are on the ground being attacked by the swarm, BUT still tied into the cliff belay points with the rope's ends attached to our waists with either a well cinched knot that had to be untied or a locking biner that had to be manipulated open to get free in order to run away! I had the least amount of slack rope and my buddy had already run to the end of the slack and was feverously trying to separate himself from the rope, every time either of us moved very much it yanked the other guy around who was also trying to get separated from the rope which held us in the yellow jacket cloud! It was like a comedic scene from a Road Runner cartoon!

Finally got free and ran probably a 1/4 mile to get away from the swarm, left the rope hanging and our protections in place until we went back a day later at night and recovered the rope and most of the protection I'd placed, I said screw the last sling runner at the top near the nest.

Ended up getting stung about thirty times, got a box of baking soda at the nearby general store to work into a paste to put on the stings, so that really helped the reaction to them.

On a side note on that trip I met Bill Shockley who had a place near the Gunks where he began going to climb when he worked at Bell Labs, spent dozens of weekends camped in his back yard on subsequent climbing forays. Great climber, gracious host and Nobel Prize recipient for his part in the invention of the semi-conductor transistor. Very interestingly his analysis was influential if not instrumental in the decision by Truman to use of nuclear weapons on Japan rather than trying to defeat them with non-nuclear tactics and the corresponding loss of Allied lives.

Needless to say after that attack by the yellow jackets I often spent an inordinate amount of time scanning and watching for any flying insects near any climb I was involved in if there was a chance of wasp friendly conditions!

Dang, and I thought I had to jump through some hoops to get away.

It's hard to make a good estimate on how times I was stung. I'm guessing 20 at least but more likely toward 50 or more. They can sting multiple times and I couldn't rush my way down to the street too much, needed to hold roots and the like on the steep slope or could sprain an ankle or worse.

So they had maybe 30 seconds to work with little swatting. I'm almost thinking I had to kill nearly all of them in that swarm to bring it to an end. I keep my wallet in my left front pocket and at one point I saw 3 or 4 dead ones sitting on top of the wallet, which will often catch falling debris such as bits of drywall being cut overhead. In a weird way it was sort of invigorating. No major damage but there was a definite struggle for survival of some sort going on there for a few minutes. Felt that way briefly anyway.

The shortcut wasn't the best idea but I'd had to do shutoffs twice already and wanted to streamline the process. Absent wasps would have been a time saver. I wish I'd had the ball cap on when the swarm was going. My hair's pretty short now and they were going at it. I saw a few settled on my shirt sleeve before dispatching them. No idea if any of the stings made it through clothing, though a few minutes after I thought I felt one on the back of one knee - took off my knee pad, which I further fasten with electric tape, and from the back a dead wasp fell to earth.

BatteredBenz · #21 08-03-2015, 05:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cmac2012

I'm guessing the retained stingers are worse. Not familiar with that, I don't think anyway. I had some nasty boils as a kid, who knows.

I'm a bit chagrined at how ignorant I was about first aid for this. My client gave me some calamine lotion. Whether or not it offered relief I couldn't tell you. No control experiment was run. Was still plenty uncomfortable.

Bees have stingers that are barbed, and the bee can and often ends up sacrificed when the stinger is pulled free from its body, very often when that occurs the venom sac is left still attached and pumping to the embedded stinger.

Wasps of which there are hundred of varieties generally do not have barbed stingers and therefore can hit you multiple times before getting killed or getting away.

for most insect stings the baking soda/water slurry will offer some pretty amazing relief after an hour or two. Any anti-histamine type over the counter stuff will help stem the bodies reaction to the venom.

BatteredBenz · #22 08-03-2015, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cmac2012

Dang, and I thought I had to jump through some hoops to get away.

It's hard to make a good estimate on how times I was stung. I'm guessing 20 at least but more likely toward 50 or more. They can sting multiple times and I couldn't rush my way down to the street too much, needed to hold roots and the like on the steep slope or could sprain an ankle or worse.

So they had maybe 30 seconds to work with little swatting. I'm almost thinking I had to kill nearly all of them in that swarm to bring it to an end. I keep my wallet in my left front pocket and at one point I saw 3 or 4 dead ones sitting on top of the wallet, which will often catch falling debris such as bits of drywall being cut overhead. In a weird way it was sort of invigorating. No major damage but there was a definite struggle for survival of some sort going on there for a few minutes. Felt that way briefly anyway.

The shortcut wasn't the best idea but I'd had to do shutoffs twice already and wanted to streamline the process. Absent wasps would have been a time saver. I wish I'd had the ball cap on when the swarm was going. My hair's pretty short now and they were going at it. I saw a few settled on my shirt sleeve before dispatching them. No idea if any of the stings made it through clothing, though a few minutes after I thought I felt one on the back of one knee - took off my knee pad, which I further fasten with electric tape, and from the back a dead wasp fell to earth.

Iv always thought that these wasp and bee stings feel what a powerful but lower powered imaginary LAZER would feel like if one was the target. The damn near instantaneous fire hot burning sensation happening simultaneously in multiple spots on your body. It happens so unexpectedly and with such severity it completely focuses your mind and your body on STOPPING THAT **** FROM HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!

That instinctive response has a get way of clearing one's mind of all the crap we think about virtually all the waking minutes of our lives!

Very interestingly that same sort of clarity inducing reality is kind of like what happens when you're rock climbing. Your survival demands you focus on such a tiny array of circumstances so completely that after you get to the top of a route and you can draw back and relax it's almost as if the climb has forced/allowed your brain to flush out so to speak, it can be quire refreshing. I suppose many activities that demand such focus could have similar effects.

You're quite lucky you didn't have a severe allergic reaction, a couple stings could have put you in anaphylactic shock and you might of died there in the brush on that side of the hill, it's happened that quick before to people.

I've got a younger brother that was stung many times by yellow jackets after he laid a sweatshirt down on the ground under some apple trees that had dropped some fruit. We used to play baseball on an adjacent open field, getting dark play ended, he went and grabbed the sweatshirt and pulled it over his head, about 10 seconds later he starts hollering and going into crazy contortions reacting to the pain of the stings, took another 20 or 30 seconds to realize the sweatshirt had to come off because that was the root of the problem, it was full of yellow jackets trapped against his skin!

Same brother la couple years later was poking a very large White Faced Hornets in their large paper ball nest, knocked a hole in it, hornets come out extremely angry as evidenced by the weird sounds they make when that happens. My brother takes off running, he was one of the fastest runners in the neighborhood, except he was looking behind him and he mis-stepped because he was running forwards and occasionally looking behind him when he stuck his foot down into an old septic tank opening. Needless to say that spectacularly stopped his forward motion, and the sharp edge of the masonry surrounding that opening ripped the skin from just above his ankle where it first caught off his shin front and up into a big bunch just below his knee cap. Gruesome right down to the bone itself, he spent the rest of that summer sweating in the heat because he couldn't get the wound wet while the rest of the kids went swimming everyday!

Around here the skunks are the natural limiting factor for the yellow jackets that ground nest, the skunk will dig deep into a nest destroying the colony, they usually do that at night, you can see the damage the next day.

Drago · #23 08-03-2015, 06:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BatteredBenz

Bees have stingers that are barbed, and the bee can and often ends up sacrificed when the stinger is pulled free from its body, very often when that occurs the venom sac is left still attached and pumping to the embedded stinger.

Wasps of which there are hundred of varieties generally do not have barbed stingers and therefore can hit you multiple times before getting killed or getting away.

for most insect stings the baking soda/water slurry will offer some pretty amazing relief after an hour or two. Any anti-histamine type over the counter stuff will help stem the bodies reaction to the venom.

crushed aspirin with the bakingsoda and water is another home remedy

my83300cd · #24 08-03-2015, 07:03 PM

I almost mowed right over a yellow jacket ground nest next to the barn but saw it just in time. Put a clear glass bowl over the main entry and got an idea how big the hive was. Went back that night with intentions of hosing it down with wasp killer and near the hive came face to face with the skunk that lives under the barn in the winter. He stamped his feet, I hissed at him and we both backed away from each other. I figured I could hose the nest down another day.
Next morning the hive was a big hole in the ground. There were a few lonely survivors buzzing around. Didn't know skunks ate nests like that. Cannot imagine how much the skunk was stung.

BatteredBenz · #25 08-03-2015, 07:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by my83300cd

I almost mowed right over a yellow jacket ground nest next to the barn but saw it just in time. Put a clear glass bowl over the main entry and got an idea how big the hive was. Went back that night with intentions of hosing it down with wasp killer and near the hive came face to face with the skunk that lives under the barn in the winter. He stamped his feet, I hissed at him and we both backed away from each other. I figured I could hose the nest down another day.
Next morning the hive was a big hole in the ground. There were a few lonely survivors buzzing around. Didn't know skunks ate nests like that. Cannot imagine how much the skunk was stung.

I think the skunks long hair at least in part helps protect most of their body from the stinging

CarpeDiem51392 · #26 08-04-2015, 12:56 AM

Just saw some mutant bastards in the awning over my front door, big strong looking roughly the size of a 50 cent piece :-o

cmac2012 · #27 08-04-2015, 01:43 AM

I have a new appreciation for skunks. I'm guessing their fur is pretty tough. It's a living I guess. Eating wasps I mean.

The experience did focus the mind. We don't often run into competition from the natural world that challenges us. I've read elsewhere people saying that keeping still is better defense. Hmm . . . maybe. Not sure I'm going to be able to try that one out.

TwitchKitty · #28 08-04-2015, 08:15 AM

I know bugs serve a purpose in nature and I try to give them the benefit of the doubt but where yellow jackets are concerned I'll be damned if have ever seen even one redeeming quality in those evil little bastards.

Simpler=Better · #29 08-04-2015, 08:21 AM

Honestly simply washing the affected area(s) and then a (big) gulp of rum works wonders. Next day the swelling was gone too.

atypicalguy · #30 08-06-2015, 11:09 PM

Pour boiling water on a nest

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