I was complicit with killing a wasps nest

[ScrambledTofuNeedsKalaNamak]

I'm vegan and my DH is pescetarian. He obviously isn't concerned about fish, although his favourite animal is a shark (make that make sense), but he won't kill anything unnecessarily.

We had a wasps nest on our property recently which was a danger to people walking by our property, and to us and potentially our animals. We couldn't just leave them and let them be because of where it was. It was in our post box.

We couldn't move the nest for obvious reasons and so my DH went out and bought something that killed them (I don't know what it was). I knew he was going to do this and so I'm complicit. I feel really shit.

I've been vegan for over 10 years and I wonder if there was anything else we could've done to not destroy this wasps nest and kill them? Leaving it in situ was not an option.

You can be as blunt as you want with me, and I deserve it, but I would like to know if there was another option, and going forward I would choose that option. Research wasn't helpful at the time.

They definitely weren't honey bees.

I know that wasps are hated, even by vegans, but they have a purpose. They are pollinators, predators and decomposers.

I'm really sad because I didn't stop the decision to kill them, but what could we have done?

We have a wasps nest in the bunker by our back door. I noticed it today. My DP is vegan and I'm a pescatarian. We are currently debating what to do. Ordinarily we would leave it to run its course over the summer, we'd remove the stuff we need from the bunker and just shut the door. However, we are selling our house and so it would become our buyers problem soon.

Wasps only get aggressive in late summer just before they die, or if you annoy them. They are great pollinators.

We feel your pain.

Really weird story coming. We were on holiday at half term and we were attacked by 3 wasps. The SAME 3 wasps over 3 days. They kept flying in the caravan AT US and at the dogs. We would swat them away and they’d immediately come back in. This went on for HOURS. We’d open the door, they’d come in, we’d end up shutting the door.

It was the heat wave so we almost boiled to death in this tin can caravan shutting the door so much.

By day 3 vegetarian Husband had had enough and we opened the door, within ten minutes they were in trying to kill us. This time we sprayed them with Raid, just a small amount. They left, and DH went out and sprayed all round the doorway. And they didn’t come back.

3 days, 3 fucking wasps. If I COULD have killed them I would but swatting them away just made them more determined. I wasn’t afraid of wasps before the holiday, after seeing how determined they were I am now.

So you have no issue with a child suffering so the headline don’t have to die?

Considering you replaced the mail box anyways, one option:

You could have moved the current postbox at night (when they were asleep inside) to the back of your garden, a park or other green space. I'm far from a wasp expert, but do you know if you plan to kill them with spray, you wait till night when they are sleeping in the nest.

You wanna read my comment again?

This is something. We approached the post box a few times and as soon as we went near it the wasps flew out. We didn't try it at night though 😔. Thanks for this information. No, he sprayed them in the day.

Not really anything you can do other than destroy the nest, given the location.
You would have been stung moving the nest, the only possible way to do that would be to cover the entrance hole at night, then move the post box, but if it had broken or split it would be really dangerous. I am allergic as are many people, so anyone walking by the box would have been at risk. They can get aggressive with people walking near their flight path in and out of a nest.
I also hate killing things but we have had to destroy nests in our garden when they have been near the path.

I forgot to add to my post: If I'd been trying the stealth 'move the mail box at night' then I'd have stuffed some material/old T-shirt in the slot so they didn't fly out whilst being transported to the park. Then pulled the cloth out as I ran away into the darkeness.😆

Lol. This isn't a drip feed but unfortunately it was a 'post box' we inherited from the last people who lived here. It was an old ferret box, so had 2 compartments and lots of breathing holes. The nest was made in the compartment the postie didn't use, and so we hadn't realised until we saw physical activity.

Your point still stands about trying it at night though, maybe with a quilt as a cover in this instance 🤣.

@ReallyLoveYourPeachesyou are very brave with your hornets.
Our local bees association advised to always call a special telephone number if we spot a hornets. Apparently they are very dangerous for bees. And not native to the UK if I understand correctly.

We have 2 bumblebee nests at ground level. I like bumblebees and I thought they never sting.

We have an underground wasps nest somewhere at the end of the garden. They now use the exit that goes outside of our garden and we never see them. Quite good because I don’t want to have to deal with such a problem.

OP I am sorry you got upset but, as others have said and you already knew, it was the right thing to do under the circumstances.

@Branster Ours are the harmless native hornets and not the invasive Asian hornets -I sent a photo to our local university's zoology department for verification as I was unsure.

The one thing I would ban from the garden is an altogether different beast which I have no compunctions about killing: ticks. They're inevitable and come in with the wildlife, but I have just removed one from my thigh, having missed it for long enough the mouth part to become embedded, and am now not looking forward to the post-removal monitoring of the bite site. Grrr.

You should not be feeling guilty about destroying a wasps nest.

Those critters would not care if they killed a human or an animal but thanks to your partner they no longer can cause harm and this is something you should feel proud of.

Being vegan has nothing to do with it. A wasps nest is a danger to public health and anyone who notices one needs to get it removed, environmental health send guys round to destroy them.

They are dome shaped and grey coloured buzzing with activity and are alien like in appearance.

I came across one by accident as a teenager I thought " what the hell is that" and backed away from it whilst cutting a hedge. The Council came out an desptroyed it.

You could have put chicken wire around it (at night) and / or hung a sign up to warn people to keep clear. So yes you could have done more. They never nest in the same place twice.
Wasps are persecuted yet play an essential role removing pests as well as bring pollinators.
they’ll still nest in a metal box

Hornets are supposedly less aggressive than common wasps, but they are blooming scary .. huge !

I too try not to kill animals. If I can deter a pest humanely I will. But if I can’t, I will kill it. I’m not happy about this, but I’ll do it. You can’t coexist peaceably with an animal that is incapable of coexisting peaceably with you. If they are destroying property or could harm you, they have to go.

People like you and me have a problem as we are trying to live outside the natural order. Nature is built on animals killing each other. No other animal would have a problem with getting rid of another animal that was bothering it, by whatever means possible.

its not natural or possible to live a life without harming others. You will continually come into conflict with your principles if you try. All you can do is reduce the number of incidents as best you can. And you have.

My bad, sorry, I read it as you would judge 🤦‍♀️
serves me right for trying to watch tv at the same time 😂

OP, I thought I’d share the natural order of things from an area of my garden where we have a pond. We created this area when we had the garden landscaped. So this is man made.
There has been no human intervention in the following story.
Maybe it will make you feel better.
We used to have a few frogs. I don’t know how they materialised. The baby ones were really cute. They went about their business doing whatever frogs do.
A very enterprising cat started visiting under the cover of darkness.
During hot weather a random snake would appear out of nowhere. A green one, a black one. I’ve never seen them together and I don’t know how many there are. Sometimes there would be a snake in the pond doing who knows what. I decided not to think about the snakes because I’m scared of them even though these are harmless to humans, but there’s nothing I can do about them.
We’ve always had a heron turn up stalking the pond. Maybe more than one. I can’t tell if it’s the same one.
Sometime we’d get ducks visiting. Mating season I think.
This is went on peacefully for a number of years.
But now…
The frogs have completely disappeared! I blame the cat. This is bad.
The fish are still there but I don’t know the count. I am not sure if the heron ever caught any. We started with goldfish years ago. We now also have a lot of dark fish, apparently from birds that transfer the eggs from the river on their feet when they use our ponds. Lots of birds drink from there. This is not bad.
The cat still regularly patrols the area. No idea what she catches.
But now a crow which visits regularly has started stealing fish from the pond! This is a recent development that I am aware of. Amazing to see it doing it but this is bad. I can’t confront the crow since I read that thread on MN where a woman and her dog were regularly attacked by crows due to some minor misunderstanding. it was one of the funniest threads on MN, I recommend a read!
The net result is the cute frogs have become 100 % extinct and I’m pretty sure the number of fish has been drastically reduced.
No idea on the snake population and I don’t want to know.
It’s basically the opposite of Snow White skipping around surrounded by bunnies and little sweet birds and baby deer and adorable animals.
We have snakes and crows and vicious looking herons and a crafty semi feral cat and who knows what else that I’m not aware of. At least the wasps
keep to themselves. The lovely ducks haven’t returned yet. Maybe something else ate those.
I half expect a hippo or crocodile to eat us alive one of these days, just jumping out of a hedge.
You hear of these people sitting in their garden in peace and quiet enjoying the birds singing with a nice cup of tea or glass of wine, maybe reading a nice book. Not my experience. Very stressful existence for everyone in our garden!

Forgot to mention the bats at dusk in the summer!
And the dragon fly sex maniacs.
Not a peaceful existence 😂

We have a hornets nest in our chimney - again. They come into our living room at night.
They will be exterminated because we can't have dgc getting stung when they visit.

When we had wasps in our mail box we put tumble dryer sheets in there ( the wasps were checking out the location at the time).
For some reason they hate the smell of tumble dryer sheets and left quickly.
Next year try preempting the wasps before they build a nest.