Stinging-Insect Lessons

I was about 7 years old when I gave my first pest management advice to my 5-year-old cousin. While near a small stream searching for salamanders, a bumblebee perched itself on the tip of my cousin’s nose. With the authority of a well-trained entomologist, I said, “Don’t move, and it won’t sting you.” His body froze. Nevertheless, within a few seconds, he
was stung on the tip of his nose. He ran back to the house yelling, “You were wrong!” Hence, my first encounter with stinging insects.

As the years rolled by, I learned the hard way that you can’t always predict what stinging insects will do. With that in mind, I offer you some advice I assure you is more accurate than that of a 7-year old.

• Housing issues. Mud daubers are solitary wasps and most of the time they’re beneficial. I was fresh out of college and eager to share my education when I was called to solve a mud dauber predicament. My first reaction was that this was a minor problem, and probably removing a nest or two would solve it. (Wrong!) I explained these insects are solitary and not aggressive. (Wrong again!)
  At this point, it was time to shut my mouth and hear the evidence before making a judgment call. That’s a lesson I have tried to remember all my life.
  Each structure had a gas vent to the exterior, and each vent was covered with a small hood for rain protection. The size and shape of the hoods were ideal for mud dauber wasps nest construction. When three or four mud daubers did this, gas couldn’t escape and the house went boom. They told me that there were 200,000 houses that had this type of vent. Without hesitation I told them to cut off the protective hoods and use flush screening. That was 46 years ago and no more buildings have blown up. Arcopestology refers to the study of architecture to prevent pest entrance
  and it served me well.
• Honeybees vs. hummingbirds. Having solved an ant problem for hummingbird feeders, I was feeling good. A consumer product designed for hummingbird feeders, was doing the trick. However, the customer now had honeybees eating from the feeders, causing birds to avoid the area. That’s when I discovered a bee guard, which keeps bees out but allows birds to feed. It works like a plug but features a grid-like mask to keep the bees out.
• Size matters. When I was a pest management professional, the company policy where I worked was to kill honeybee nests in walls and remove them.
  One day in the field, I thought I did a spectacular job killing an entire nest for the customer. I removed the hive from below a window all the way down to the floor, covering the width of the window. But soon I noticed honey oozing up from the floor below the windows. I probed and found more upset honeybees and plenty of hive. By the time I finished, I ripped up a section of the floor about 3 ft. wide and 12 ft. long.
• New heights. In days of old, power spray rigs solved a lot of problems. Standing at ground level of a four-story hotel with an unoccupied attic, I was able to knock off what I thought was a whole colony of bald-faced hornets. For some reason, though, only a few came out and dropped to the ground. When I checked the attic I could hear the upset hornets beyond the attic door. I quickly opened the door and tossed a full-release aerosol in. Ten minutes later — silence. The hornets were dead.

I hope you can learn from my mistakes and avoid such errors. pmp

You can reach Dr. Frishman, an industry consultant since 1967 and president of AMF Pest Management Services,
at mypmp@northcoastmedia.net.