A Rude Encounter With Nature

Archie did not have a good morning. It started out like most other mornings this summer. Part of our morning routine is a complete poop patrol of the backyard. This includes what I call the back forty, a small ell off the main backyard. The house is on a corner lot so this ell is paralleled by a sidewalk and a street, and separated from the main part of the yard by a short stretch of fence with a gate that I keep propped open. It's a bit neglected. The dogs like to play back there so I make sure that it is part of the regular poop patrol but I don't do much with the space itself--it's weedy and dry.

Anyway, I decided to mow all of the backyard this morning. Archie loves to help me mow, shadowing my every step. I started in the back forty. After some tight corners with the mower around the propane tank, I was just getting into the rhythm when I saw Archie explode into a frenzy of running, diving, rubbing his face on the ground. He was covered in bees! On his head, his side. I managed to call him to me (his recall is getting so much better!) and we ran around to the main part of the yard where I brushed the remaining insects off of him. He was frantically flipping and rubbing in the grass.

I've encountered these little fuckers before. Last summer, I had two different nests of them in flowerbeds in the front yard. They are social, live in nests in the ground that they dig, usually located around something like the stem of a large plant or a pole that extends into the ground. And they are extraordinarily aggressive if their nest is disturbed. They interpret disturbance fairly liberally so I keep an eye out for them. They cling to clothing, or fur, and sting multiple times. They will even sting through clothing. Bastards.

I've never gotten a good look at them except to figure out that they are around 10-12 mm long, fairly dark in color with clear wings, and they are not bumblebees. I have plenty of those in my yard, more than one species, and they are easy to identify. After doing some research, I think that these things are some sort of wasp, not bees. A lot of the evidence points to wasps: nesting activity so late in the summer, aggressive defense of the nest, etc.

I inspected Archie carefully for swelling or similar adverse histamine reactions. I put him in the house and kept an eye on him for about 15 minutes just to be sure. Then I went back to see if I could find the nest. Sure enough, they were coming and going from a small hole located next to the pipe containing the electrical supply for the propane tank meter. I must have bumped it with the mower and by sheer bad luck, they went for Archie instead of me.

I cobbled together some water hoses and sprayed the wasp nest with poison. My experience of last summer suggests I will have to do this a second time to completely eliminate the nest. Of course, before I resorted to poison last year, I tried benign solutions such as trying to drown them out. All that did was provide them with a regular source of water and make them more active and aggressive. At one point, I was having problems exiting my front door because one of the nests was under a rosebush about four feet away. So, poison. I'll also set out some hanging traps, which don't seem to attract bumblebees (although plenty of sweat bees make it into them).

Poor little Archie. Even when I finished mowing the main part of the backyard, Archie decided he wanted to stay in the house. That was not at all like my happy-go-lucky puppy. 

I generally take a live, let live attitude towards the insects in my yard. As long as doing so won't endanger me, I capture and transport spiders back outside. I don't break spider webs unless I absolutely need to. Instead of poisoning the horrifically slick moss coating my sidewalk and driveway last winter (all the poisons are terribly toxic for fish and amphibians), I sprinkled sodium bicarbonate over everything--it changes the pH and the moss dies. Works great and it's cheap! I plant flowers in the front yard that attract bumblebees and butterflies. But these little ground-nesting, stinging wasps--they have to go. I can't have myself, and now the dogs, attacked when we wander around in our yard.