A new friend of mine (warning: big pics) — OZONE Asylum, home of the Mad Scientists

A new friend of mine (warning: big pics)

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	That's a fair argument, WS, and not an uncommon observation. Proximity to the nest or hive is key - aggression against a target far from the nest is likely to be wasteful and pointless. The risk of being swarmed increases greatly if you go swatting a bee or wasp within 'scenting' distance of the nest, but I think it less likely for remote drones to get all bothered about it when an attack upon the nest is unlikely. Still, when stinging, bees and wasps both release a pheromone that purportedly increases the likelihood of the target being stung again. In fact, it's part of the reason for the apparently suicidal behaviour of bees! When stinging other arthropods, bees actually inject only the required amount of venom to kill or incapacitate their aggressor, and they retain their sting - they live to fight another day, or perhaps, to sting the same target again for good measure. When stinging a large vertebrate (for instance, a careless human or other large mammal attacking the hive) the bee sacrifices itself for the good of the nest. Its sting is anchored into the flesh of the aggressor to that even if the bee is shaken/swiped/pulled off, the sac remains in place, and actually continues to pump (it can be seen to visibly spasm) both venom into the target, and pheromones into the air. Each bee that sacrifices itself ends up pumping several times more venom into the target than a sting-and-run, and so increases the likelihood of the target giving up before the nest has been totally destroyed. Attrition for the greater good. According to a re-enactment I saw on TV once (so it must be true) one of two British anglers standing on the bank of a river was stung to death within minutes of swatting a bee on his arm. Despite the two of them being within arms-reach of eachother, the man with bee juice all over his arm received a substantially greater number of stings than his companion, and was killed by sheer number rather than intolerance of the venom. They were unlucky - they just happened to be standing in the shade of the tree containing the nest. I would rather just not swat them than hope that I'm nowhere near a nest when I do. Still, WS, I would interested to experiment (or have someone else do so while I safely observe their notes - hehe). First, to see if squashing a few early party-crashers increases the likelihood of further crashers turning up (pheromones potentially drawing those 40+ to the site), though this doesn't seem all that likely. Second, to see if wandering drones are more likely to sting, or gather near, a person or object that has been smeared with some venom from a carefully extracted sac. Personally, I've never been stung by a wasp simply because when everybody else is attracting its attention (and provoking a reaction) by flapping and squealing, I go on about my business. I once even cupped my hands to carry an errant wasp out of my school classroom, seemingly a chivalrous act characterised by a cavelier attitude towards my own safety... but it was actually because I was recovering from an exceptionally unpleasant migraine (11-16 were my worst years) and found the screams of the girls in my class to be unbearably painful. In contrast, a wasp sting would have been nothing - though I'm fortunate I wasn't proved wrong, and released the wasp quite without incident. Oddly, I've found that talking calmly to unwanted visitors (ie- asking them politely to go somewhere else) tends to work for me. Maybe a certain tone of voice can repel insects by alerting them to the presence of something large that doesn't seem very scared of them (flapping and screaming, on the other hand, provokes an aggressive reaction, and draws them closer for the attack). My father, apparently, hasn't been so lucky. He was once attacked while working on the roof of a building (no easy escape) when a large number of wasps returned in the middle of the day to find their nest had been frozen and removed (while empty, duh) by inept pest controllers. He told me that they gathered quickly, made some angry noises, then headed straight for him. He was absolutely covered in stings by the time he got down from the roof. He says this has happened to him more than once, and he's sure that wasps just don't like him very much. A good reason for me not to swat the blighters - they and I seem to have a bit of an understanding. lol _____ Funnily enough, Blaise, three times I've seen a large fly being eaten by a wasp, and all three times were in the same week but in different parts of the city. There must have been an influx of a particularly tasty type of fly or something. The first one looked as though it was attempting to mount its meal on a train station platform. The fly was dragging itself along the floor with the wasp holding on from behind. Upon closer inspection, the wasp was quite obviously trying to cut the fly in half. The struggle was amazing to watch, and I missed my train in order to see the conclusion of it - it was laborious and messy, but the wasp seemed to think the meal worth the effort. Until then, I'd thought it was just the whole 'paralysing prey and laying eggs in their bodies' thing that wasps did, but I was amazed to see such a display of outright 'preying'. Loading...
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