gigastasioA handy reference guide for you
KoboldCoterieThis would be welcome on [email protected] (which sorely needs content)!
Boomer Humor DoomergodI had carpenter bees at my old house that were so tame I could grab them out of the air and pet them.
bearboiblakeHoney bees don’t actually “need help the most”, they’re widely kept for honey production. Solitary wasps (of which there are many species) are much more endangered. Not yellowjackets, though, fuck those guys.
WIZARD POPE💫I think it was meant as in ‘we need to build them hives and stuff’ who knows. Definitely don’t need much help, those guys
tylerYellow jackets are generalist predators. As long as they aren’t making a nest somewhere real close to where you want to be, they are good at killing a whole lot of pests.
It was just a little joke really, I’m not going to war with yellow jackets or anything, but one did sting me for no reason once, so tensions do remain high between our cultures.
MinnesotaGoddamI have an arrangement with the spiders (although the Toilet Compacts got violated by a spider what crawled on my drying off towel last week, the bastard) and if you need some spiders to go to war I can send some to your aid
Spiders are quite a mercurial ally, their individuality renders agreements reached through collective bargaining to be seen really more as guidelines than a permenent arrangement. Still, in my experience, if you treat them fairly, they respond in kind. My relationship with them has been quite strong since I rescued a big one that fell in the bath and attended one of their bake sales.
One fell in your bath? That’s a violation of the Toilet Compacts oh your gods what is this world coming to do no spiders honor interspecies accords anymore
Wait I can PET BUMBLEBEES?!
TheTechnician27Bumblebees are pretty gentle, and whereas I used to be extremely scared of bees (and especially bumblebees because of their size), I find them adorable to observe up-close now that I’ve gotten over my fear.
However, the question I would ask regarding petting is: why? When I pet a household dog or a cat, it’s ideally because I think it comforts them, and at worst (if they’re mildly annoyed and I don’t realize), it’s never going to harm them.
For the bee, though, it’s probably strictly uncomfortable for them to have a being 50,000 times their size come up and start putting pressure on them. (Bumblebees can distinguish noxious stimuli, but they do still respond somewhat to regular tactile stimulation; see p.3.)
Their wings and legs are fragile, and it’s not like they can’t be accidentally provoked into stinging you. If they’re just minding their own business, it’s really best to leave them alone, because at best you’re annoying/not comforting them, and at worst you’re physically harming them.
TL;DR: Bumblebees are really cool, but just treat them like you’d treat other wild animals that don’t want to be touched; that you can get so close to them and watch is already a blessing.
That’s a really well argued paragraph. But have you considered: why pet shaped if not for petting?
(Jokes aside though. Point taken. But there’s nothing you can say to kee p me from talking to them in baby talk from now on when I’m out gardening amongst them. Whose a big stripey boy? Yes you are, aren’t you? :))
When I was in school they used to land on my glasses and then crawl between my glasses and my eyes. I changed deodorants and it stopped but like, have you ever wondered if you were cool enough to not get stung in the eye hole? I do not wonder that.
It was that old spice that tastes like lemonade what attracted the bees, if you wondered.
What about wood bees? If I knock them out with smoke are they chill enough to pet? If I use good smoke?
rockerface🇺🇦They’re floofy!
socsaYou can (very, very carefully!) pet the top of their thorax when they’re not flying, such as when preoccupied with feeding at a flower, although as TheTechnician27 outlined, it’s probably not good for them. Better is if you can find one that’s struggling to fly (semi-common this time of year, when things are still warming up) and then you can warm the little guy in your hands if they’re cold or chauffeur them from flower to flower if they’re hungry. Often this will help them regain the strength to keep flying, but sometimes they never do; I assume in these cases they’re dying, but at least I gave them some hospice care. It’s very strange to deposit a struggling bee on a flower, watch it feed, and then see it wiggle its little feet in the air like it’s calling the magic carpet back for another lift.
Okay can I actually pet bumblebees or is this just a meme?
Yes, but you still have to bee careful.
Yes (but maybe you shouldn’t). See: lemmy.world/post/45251643/23076623
TrackinDaKrakenThey forgot the tarantula hawk
Tarantula hawk wasps are relatively docile and rarely sting without provocation, but the sting—particularly that of P. grossa—is among the most painful of all insects, though the intense pain only lasts about five minutes.
Five minutes is a long time when something hurts like a mf.
I love watching the carpenter bees at my house. The ones that are on patrol follow the most exact flight patterns, it’s crazy. They always fly the same narrow lane, same height, stop and hover at the same spot for the same length of time. It’s amazing to watch.
Bonje
FredselfishWhere the killer bees?
They’re right behind you.
Last time heard about them is they are in the states and have killed people here.
They here and read story in the paper when I was a teen of a farmer that was killed by them.
SOME wasps are, and often not very good ones.
Yellowjackets aren’t anywhere near prolific enough at pollination (or the insect corpse cleanup they specialize in) to make those flying terrorists worthwhile.
Solitary wasps are cool, though, they can stay.
There are fig wasps, of course. Plus other species like paper wasps that eradicate pests. The year I had a paper wasp family move in near my garden was a bumper year for my brassicas, because they absolutely annihilated the cabbage white caterpillar population.
Basically, wasps aren’t just useless enemies.
True if most wasps, yeah, but not yellowjackets. They can fuck right off.
watsonYellowjackets are definitely bastards. As far as I can tell they don’t provide any benefit to society whatsoever.
When I was a teenager, I grew up in the country so we had wasps everywhere. I hated them. One morning in the summer I was dead asleep–until I was awakened by a wasp that stung me in the fucking neck. So this asshole had to fly into my room decide to land on me, probably crawl around a bit and then decide “Fuck this guy right here NNNNNNG”. I was so goddamn angry and confused. I had to get up and tend to the sting because I swell like a moteherfucker. However, being a lazy teenager, I went back to bed. I woke up about 10 minutes later because I then felt it CRAWLING ON ME AGAIN. I was so fucking furious, I just monkey pounded it into a million little pieces with my fists in the mattress.
Fuck wasps, I spent many years capturing them, holding them with tweezers and slowly cooking them over a candle. Not sorry.
This is me except with a Yellowjacket that flew into my ear and stung me in my ear canal then casually flew out.
It was actually so profound that it caused problems with my wax production and skin in that ear, and have had constant allergy issues with it ever since.
I swore to myself I’d wage war on every yellowjacket from that day forward. Same thing with carpenter bees, I actively swat and stomp those buggers - they’ve destroyed so much of my structural wood on my property they are beyond a nuisance.
Build a bee box for the carpenter bees. They arent completely terrible!
I am not trying to be a one-upper, but I do have a similar story.
Before rennovating a house I lived in, we had TERRIBLE windows. The kind that let drafts of air and all sorts of creepy crawlies in. Well, an engineering paper wasp decided to build a nest in the eaves above my bathroom window. I was battling those red wasps with the jet black wings for a whole summer.
I was in the shower one day. I got done. I grabbed my towel from the towel hook and started drying off. It turns out there was a wasp on the towel, and it stung the shit out of my abdomen in a few places.
I ran around naked in the house swatting at the little bastard. I had to take another shower because of all of the sweat from running around swatting.
I got out of the shower to ANOTHER wasp on my towel. I noticed this one before it stung me.
I have since replaced the windows, but I STILL inspect my towels to this day.
Astonishing how often I see someone start swatting at a paper wasp when it gets curious.
The fuck? It’s like a dog smelling you, but that dog has a stinger. You don’t swat at the fucking thing. You chill out and act real casual. Maybe pretend you didn’t even notice it. What wasp? I didn’t see any wasps. Now check my back so we can get our asses inside.
Bastards
Hoverflies are so sweet, sometimes there’ll be one or two hovering near me and I’ll just stick out a finger for them and they’ll chill there for awhile.
Makes me feel like a Disney princess but with bugs 😊
Careful making friends in the garden princess.
The myth that bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly according to science needs to die.
They wouldn’t be able to fly in an outdated, simplified model, where you pretend they’re birds and just plug in their wingspan and weight.
If you account for the fact that air molecules are a lot larger relative to their size than to a birds, so air acts more like water at that small scale, and they don’t just move their wings up and down but in a complicated movement that shapes the turbulence, it’s no surprise they can fly, and scientists know that.
I remember watching a video from a physicist who failed her pilot’s license exam because she explained that and the modern theories of how airplane flight works instead of the old wingspan, weight, speed, and air density over the wings model.
Needless to say, she took the test again, gave the answer they wanted, and the video was about her building a plane out of wood about a month after she finished the launch of her Mach 2.1 capable model rocket.
TheBenCommandmentsWell that sounds cool. Got a link?
Here’s a video she did of a 3d printed supersonic rocket. I think it’s the Mach 2 one, but I don’t exactly remember:
I Broke the Sound Barrier with a 3D Printed Rocket!
Even been stung by paper wasps twice. First time I was a child and freaked out cause, again, child. Second time was just a few years ago helping a neighbor move a dryer. Such my hand all up inside that nest and caught massive a half dozen stings before I figured out what was going on. It seriously felt like slight electric shocks, but the pain faded in a matter of minutes and wasn’t all that bad during that time.
StalinwolfWent down a metal slide once and a swarm of them came out of one of the top poles. Swarmed my throat and stung me several times there. Survived, but it was horrible.
LogicalDrivelwhen i was about 10, i was climbing on the picnic pavilion at the park. I had got to the roof and went to get down by holding the edge of the roof and rolling/flipping off of it. I got a firm grasp of paper wasp nest with one hand and halfway through my flip down, i felt the stings. Let go and fell flat on my back in the mulch then booked it home faster than ive ever run.