OH HAI
OH HAI. Hay ’sup? I see whut you did there. I have never had so many lolbugesque captions be suggested by a single photograph! Ceiling wasp does not approve. I can has nectar? Aggressive wasp is aggressive….
Jeremiah took this photo while touring a house he was about to rent.
I should point out that this was one of about four wasps he saw while touring the house. In the middle of Winter in New England¹. He says he’s no longer living in the house, which is probably just as good as this was a good sign that they’re in the walls.
Unfortunately I can’t tell my wasps apart real well yet. From side angles in other photos Jeremiah sent in, this might be Polistes dominulus, the European paper wasp, but the reddish eyes and face make me lean more towards red paper wasp. It’s probably for the best if so; red paper wasps are much less aggressive. I’ve read several reports of humans peacefully coexisting with paper wasps; the one case of “I had to destroy the nest” I read about came when they built their nest right above a door jamb. Going through the door would startle the wasps, and with the owner’s head a foot away from the (recently startled) nest, he got stung two or three times before deciding to knock the nest down. By contrast, another wasp nest was just four feet to the side of that one, and he never had trouble from them.
Thanks, Jeremiah, for another great photo!
¹ Help me out here geographywise: is there a proper delineation for “New England”, and if so, does it include Delaware²? I recently suggested to someone that Pennsylvania was in New England and oh my did I find out I was wrong. It’s sort of like jellyfish gender, “only they can tell the difference” but boy, can they tell the difference.
² This just in: No.
tceisele said,
February 21, 2008 @ 9:11 am
According to Bug Guide, Polistes dominula has distinctly orange antennae, and this one’s antennae look more dark reddish-brown, so I’d say it’s more likely to be the red paper wasp.
I used to have paper wasps infesting my apartment every winter before I was married, sometimes there were as many as a dozen flying around the kitchen. We had sort of a live-and-let-live arrangement, I didn’t try to kill them, and they didn’t sting me. It worked out OK, except that people were reluctant to visit me at home.
BunnyKissd said,
February 21, 2008 @ 10:54 am
The Regions of the US: http://usa.usembassy.de/travel-regions.htm
Love the pic Jeremiah!
Kazriko said,
February 21, 2008 @ 11:12 am
Pennsylvania definitely isn’t, it was part of the middle colonies there. The colonies were kind of split between 3 sections, there’s some ambiguous zones there though. Virginia was a southern colony, but had some of the traits of the middle colonies and was right on the border. (It even split up because of this half-south nature.) I’d probably draw the line for new england just north-east of new york, but new york has some traits of the northern colonies.
Jeremiah said,
February 21, 2008 @ 11:31 am
Well, scary bit is that we’re still in the house!
Thankfully there has been no evidence since that day that wasps inhabit our walls. Even if they are in there, we’ll be moving out in a few weeks, so as long as it doesn’t get nice and warm, we should be okay.
It wouldn’t surprise me to find out they were the last vestiges of one of the empty hives I’ve seen in the backyard. I knew before I even got into the house that there would be wasp problems in the summer because I could see old nests on the houses around us. Not a big deal, as I’ve been dealing with wasps my whole life. My parents finally got tired of spraying, and just shooed them out of the house whenever they were inside. Being as I ~was~ terrified of them, I had to get over that pretty quick.
Glad you liked the photo!
SamWibatt said,
February 21, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
We had wasps of some sort living in one of our walls. You could hear them scrabbling around in there, right by our bed’s headboard. Yuck. Luckily, the entrance/exit hole was on the outside of the house and they hadn’t made one to the inside before we got the exterminator over.
randytayler said,
February 22, 2008 @ 10:33 am
When it comes to animals, I’m a big believer in “live and let live”… unless it can bite, maul, or sting me. A wasp nest by the front door?! I can’t imagine letting that go until I got stung.
Lorraine said,
February 24, 2008 @ 11:26 am
New England consists of: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachussetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. I was born & raised in Connecticut (but fled as soon as I was old enough) and had New England drilled into my head by my swamp yankee relations. I like it better here in Arizona and there are much more interesting bugs here, too.