#stinging insects

[faithandarisadventures]

Hornet Nest Massachusetts Rail Trail Holden, MA October 11, 2025

[littlepawz]

Spring is here and summer is fast approaching with lovely flowers and some scary 6-legged creatures to make your life more interesting. Here is a look  at the ‘yellow stripey things’ to know which ones to guard against. 

[blatantescapism]

Exciting adventure tonight

Went out in the dark & the pouring rain to bag the nest of bald-faced hornets

Precautionary measures:

(Not pictured: work gloves tucked into jacket cuffs, jeans tucked into boots, with rubber bands to keep all the joins airtight)

The nest was larger than my 5-gallon bucket, in both length and girth, which led to an exciting moment where I had to abandon ship for a while until the rain beat them back down:

Came back with a big lawn leaf bag & got the whole mess into a carryable arrangement. Brought it to a spot under the pine grove far from everything important, loosed the bag, and ran like fuck.

I had to brush off the five or so who managed to cling onto me, but I escaped without being stung!

[llamatheist]

Uhoh :( I wish they hadn't picked our backyard where we have multiple stupid (affectionate) animals who definitely will bother flying bugs.

[realkaijuhavecurves]

Listening to Sting of the Wild by entomologist Justin O. Schmidt right now. I'm at the chapter about Tarantula Hawks, the wasp with one of the most painful stings in the insect kingdom. Intrigued by his description of their vibrant metallic hues, I had to google them to see what they look like:

And I thought to myself, hmmm, this looks familiar...

Aha, I know where I've seen this before!

I had to confirm with the Fallout wiki that I wasn't misremembering, and sure enough, it was Tarantula Hawk (Latin name Pepsinae) DNA that Dr. Borous spliced to create Cazadores in Old World Blues.

And if the sting of a regular, normal sized Tarantula Hawk is unbearably painful to the point that nobody who gets stung can retain motor control, I dread to think what a Cazadore sting must feel like.

[muladona]

first observation post

- this is a video i took and love of a little wasp (subfamily Eumeninae) in my yard, sitting on my little finger lime tree

i unfortunately don’t have a camera with macro zoom so these poor quality iphone pics will have to do for now.

- location: south australia, adelaide hills to adelaide plains region.

[howlmountain]

This is as close as I'll get for still a little while longer

(photo ID: A photo of a wooded hillside with saplings and green leaves. Mature tree trunks are also visible. A gray hornets nest hangs in the middle. A lens flare rainbow crosses from upper left to lower right)

[laughing-thrush]

There are lots of perks to working outside, but I didn’t expect bald faced yellow jackets to be one of them! These are the guys that make the big oval nests in trees that many ascribe to paper wasps- this one is shaving some soft wood off the outside of some old siding to use in making its hive. They do this so regularly that, after I stopped mistaking them for incoming biting flies, I now think nothing of it. They regularly land nearby and I do love to watch their little jaws work up a wee ball of wood pulp. This video was taken on my phone without zoom! Below are the little tracks their harvesting leaves behind!