Eeeek giant wasps!

[Mr Celine]

Nearly home this evening, cycling along in the gathering gloom I suddenly saw these blighters hovering around just above head height above the cycle path.

I carried on another 50m or so before thinking WTF, did I really see that? I had to stop to go back and look, and yes, someone has hung some giant model wasps above the cycle path.

 

[DRM]

Similar size to a Hornet I saw in Cyprus several years ago, that was one scary beast!

 

[ColinJ]

I saw something very similar in the wooden holiday 'lodge' that I stayed in in Scotland a month ago. My niece's dog was chasing something near the door and I wandered over, thinking that it was probably one of the daddy longlegs that had got in the night before when we left a window open. I jumped back in horror when I saw what looked like the biggest wasp ever. It was so big and scary-looking that I could hardly believe it was real but it was buzzing around so it definitely was! I managed to shoo the dog away and open the door to let the winged beast out. I don't know what it was. It might have been some harmless insect with colouring designed to make it look like a huge wasp to frighten off predators. Whatever it was, I didn't like it ...

 

[Mr Celine]

I saw something very similar in the wooden holiday 'lodge' that I stayed in in Scotland a month ago. My niece's dog was chasing something near the door and I wandered over, thinking that it was probably one of the daddy longlegs that had got in the night before when we left a window open. I jumped back in horror when I saw what looked like the biggest wasp ever. It was so big and scary-looking that I could hardly believe it was real but it was buzzing around so it definitely was! I managed to shoo the dog away and open the door to let the winged beast out. I don't know what it was. It might have been some harmless insect with colouring designed to make it look like a huge wasp to frighten off predators. Whatever it was, I didn't like it ...

Probably a wood wasp, they are about 50mm long, I sometimes get them in my garden. They aren't like ordinary wasps, they don't sting or live in colonies.

The 'wasps' in my photo above are about 200mm long!!

 

[andrew_s]

My "local" had a hornet's nest in it a couple of years ago, and you'd quite often get a few flying round inside. Fortunately they are fairly peaceable things and don't get upset if you brush one out of your hair.

 

[Cuchilo]

My "local" had a hornet's nest in it a couple of years ago, and you'd quite often get a few flying round inside. Fortunately they are fairly peaceable things and don't get upset if you brush one out of your hair.

I think you may have a scalp problem .

 

[united4ever]

Japanese hornet is the one to fear:

http://www.avivhadar.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/hornet.jpg

 

[Tin Pot]

[QUOTE 4502870, member: 9609"]what was this, in my garden, it was huge, that is the top of a 4" board it is sat on.

[/QUOTE]

Evil incarnate. Kill it, identify it later.

Could be a black and yellow mud dauber, or perhaps a pigeon tremex?

http://www.insectidentification.org/bees-ants-wasps-and-similar.asp

 

[Poacher]

Evil incarnate. Kill it, identify it later.

Could be a black and yellow mud dauber, or perhaps a pigeon tremex?

http://www.insectidentification.org/bees-ants-wasps-and-similar.asp

Most unlikely - Reiver's in Scotland, while that site is for identification of North American insects.

 

[fossyant]

At least it's not one of those 'clowns'.

 

[Poacher]

[QUOTE 4502870, member: 9609"]what was this, in my garden, it was huge, that is the top of a 4" board it is sat on.

[/QUOTE]
Gotcha! Female Giant Wood Wasp aka Urocerus Gigas - not a wasp, but a sawfly. Damn spectacular insect!

 

[Poacher]

My "local" had a hornet's nest in it a couple of years ago, and you'd quite often get a few flying round inside. Fortunately they are fairly peaceable things and don't get upset if you brush one out of your hair.

We don't use an electrical hookup when camping, with the sole exception being when we were offered one for free when at the Inside Park near Blandford Forum one September a few years ago (before the arrival of efficient LED camping lights). The 60w light attracted loads of hornets in the evening; they found a way under the valance, and to my eternal shame I killed about 20 of them before realising that they weren't fighting back, let alone initiating warfare the way wasps might. Reversion to the Camping Gaz light on a low setting reduced the influx considerably, and we lived in peace from then on. Taking a portable TV was also a mistake - it died as soon as I switched it on for the morning news, probably because of overnight condensation.

 

[Mr Celine]

Something strange is going on. Half a mile from the giant wasps this has appeared.

Roughly life size so not so disturbing as the wasps.

 

[subaqua]

[QUOTE 4503986, member: 259"]I was the first one up in a campsite in Hungary in the eighties, so off I went with a bucket to do some vigorous pumping (@Fnaar ) . A colony of hornets, having taken up residence in the pump overnight, took it on themselves to tell me to bugger off, including flying up my shorts and giving me such massive stings you could have played golf with them[/QUOTE]


Was it a case of wanting something to ease the pain but leave the swelling

 

[andrew_s]

Something strange is going on. Half a mile from the giant wasps this has appeared.

It's become almost normal to install artworks of some kind at intervals along sustrans type cycle paths. The ones I found a couple on weeks ago were origami swans & boats (from folded steel plate) in a stream alongside a short stretch of cycle path (former railway) near Bridgwater, between Cossington and Bawdrip