Does anyone know how to get rid of wasps? There are loads of them here, attracted by all the sugar we use in the factory. We can't use poison because of contamination (in fact, we don't really want to kill them in case they fall into the product)

HELP! (please)

maybe you smoke them out?
I think there should be someone in your phone book who'd know how.
good luck!

I hate to mention this but where I come from, a "jasper" is a slang term for a wasp!

Where on earth is that?

How about you make some traps out of soft-drink cans, they always go inside them.



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Those who forget the pasta are doomed to reheat it.

Intrigue - near Swindon oddly enough!

It's also listed here in the Dictionary of Slang, unfortunately right next to an explanation of the rhyming slang term J. Arthur Rank (parental control alert there!)



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* I'm backing the campaign to get the official Stalker for 2007 evicted *

It's pretty much sandwiched in!



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Those who forget the pasta are doomed to reheat it.

I know! Sorry! But isn't it a truly magnificent collection of British colloquialisms and slang words? There's even a few there I hadn't stumbled across before!

KT _
To paraphrase the (1st) Duke of Wellington: "Try wasp-hawks, ma'am." :-)

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"God rot Botchkamos Istochnik!"

Smart idea, Intrigue - I had forgotten that one.

Anyone trying to swat one from the air, make a stiff hand with gaps half the length of a wasp between the fingers. Flail as advised by the intellect. Chance of being stung, nil. Because the air goes through the gaps and wasps are heavier than flies, they get hit. Once they're on the floor you can practise your preferred method of getting them out of your life. I leave the choice to you, gentle reader.

Splat 21 - where are you when we need you?

I like the idea of wasp-hawks :-)

The trouble with smoke is that we don't have a nest, just several hundred individual wasps in a building about the size of an aircraft hanger. We are looking into the possibility of traps, but everything seems to involve poison.
Argh, nasty stingy, buzzy......jaspers.

DaveR, that sounds pretty dangerous.

KT, what do you make in your factory? Any factory that uses so much sugar must be a fun place to hang out.



Post Edited (08-07-03 17:52)

they have wasp papers here, kind of like fly paper...but it has an attractant for wasps, so I'm assuming it smells rather sweet to them. You hang them up and the wasps get interested and then get stuck. Don't know if you have them in England though.

Spray them with hair-spray. Sticky wings can't fly. Once on floor, squish with any handy heavy object.

AAC - Never heard of it, but I'll certainly ask the Health and Safety chap if he can find out if it exists. Ta

KT

There is a species of bird called the 'Bee-Eater', which I believe has been reported as present in parts of Britain in recent years: Maybe one or two of those could be recruited, and persuaded to diversify?

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"God rot Botchkamos Istochnik!"



Post Edited (08-07-03 16:47)

Dangerous? Done it for years without ill effect. Why dangerous? Certainly for wasps.

But I think 'our' wasps may be a sort of inferior, smaller, less stingified version of the all-american gridiron wasp that populates the USA, or in fact smaller than the wasps they get anywhere else.

And how are the killer bees over there? Hype or every day horror story?

Kaz, is it just the spiders that can sit across the toilet bowl in Oz?

Several years ago I was chairing a meeting which also involved a military pastor; a wonderful rotund Irish fellow who, as it happens, looked after the welfare of the local regiment of Ghurkas. It became apparent during the course of the meeting that a wasp (yes, a jasper!) had flown into the room and was making something of a nuisance of itself amongst the audience towards the back. I carried on talking and doing my best to ignore it. After a while, the pastor stood up - I assumed in order to usher said wasp out of the window. But no! He got up onto his chair, and with a mighty WHOOSH! he smote the wasp out of the air with a rolled-up newspaper, leapt to the ground and viciously stomped what little life remained out of it.

There was a stunned, bemused silence, which as Chairman I felt it to be my duty to break.

"Thankyou, pastor - but wasn't that a rather un-Christian thing to do?" I quietly asked.

"No..." said the pastor, taking a slurp of what smelled suspiciously like 'fortified' coffee. "They're one of God's mistakes."

I understood then how such a gentle man could be held in so much respect by a regiment of Ghurkas.

Nicky - we make cream cakes, in vast quantities.

AAC - the H&S chap is looking into wasp paper.

Mmmmm cream cakes. :)

You can get anti-wasp candles from the garden centres. The smell they make is quite pleasant to us but the wasps hate it and keep away.

Or there's the Robinsons bottle trick. Like the coke can, only you can see how many you've caught... Get an old pop or squash bottle, smear jam just inside the top and put a bit of water in the bottom. They fly in, can't get out, land in the water and can't fly because their wings are waterlogged.

Good luck with them!



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There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.