Haha, that electric weenie was some weird shit. Somebody had too much time on their hands. I did about the same thing, only I had a 15’ piece of bamboo, and I was happy for the extra reach. They stuck around for a while though, so I doused the ones trying to rebuild the nest with alcohol. I wonder if they got drunk right before the end.
The shop vac is also a classic solution, I have heard of people putting soapy water inside to drown them as they come in.
I guess wasps don’t thrive on carbon monoxide either.
I just cheat and get the spray can of wasp spray that will shoot 30 feet and after dusk when they all go home for the night start at the entrance soaking the nest. They will fall out in a nice pile leaving a dead nest.
What’s nice is they do not seem to build a nest there any more. Might be the dead relatives still inside the nest.
A couple of summers ago we had a real bad wasp hatch year. Some of them built a nest inside my motor home propane heater exhaust.
I turn on the LP valve, and turned on the heater. Wow there were a lot of wasps in there. It still rattles a little on start ups. The smell of wasps cooking when I first started it up.
They never came back for some more warm up time. These were the paper wasps not yellow jackets.
Bob
Some friends and my Son came up from the cities to take me fishing on lake Superior. We caught four Lake Trout and no Salmon. We were in a 20’ boat, so we were only 2 miles from shore.
We we were going to get off the lake, we had to wait for this ship to get to the ore docks. This is in our little town of Two Harbors, MN.
This is the only lake in Minnesota we have to share the water with a 1000’ water craft.
Nice fish bill, did it take long for the big ship too doc.? Nice warm day for fishing.How did the 20 foot boat feel out there.?
We kept the lines in for another hour. The lake was pretty calm until the afternoon. By then the wind picked up to about 15 mph. Then it it had white caps and we were ready to be off the lake.
The air temp on shore was about 80 F and the water was 41. So it was cool enough to wear a sweatshirt while on the water.
Wasps are territorial so if you put up a cheap fake nest there shouldn’t be a real nest nearby. Not sure what the exclusion area would be.
The annual 4 genaration fishing trip in the Norwegian mountains is over. Mostly sunny and warm weather. A full week of fishing, swimming, playing, eating and drinking. 175 fish in the freezer, some extra weight in the belly area and soar, burnt skin.
Those pictures really make me smile, life doesn’t get better than that
I should of had my hay in late May or early June but the weather has not cooperated .
If we get a forecast of two days with low rain chances I try to make hay.
Just a little while after I rolled today more rain came .
Laziness has already overtaken me, and so I updated my bike pump to a solar-direct job.
It uses 2x 50 watt 12v panels in series, and runs through a Shurflo Linear Current Booster directly to the old 24v diaphragm pump I have.
The cistern at the bottom of the hill fills with a float valve like for a cattle trough, and I built a float switch with an empty plastic bottle and some flat stock. When the water level gets too low, it depresses the switch, and shuts off the pump. Seems like with adequate sun it can probably move about 1.5-2 gallons/min up a 60’ rise. Next I need to plumb it into my 2500 gallon catchment tank on top of the hill with some sort of check valve.
Naw ORCarl you are just being Practical.
Save the sweating for things that the sun cannot easily help you with.
Like firewood working up!
Gardens fine weeding!
Are you going to try any wind supplementing for water pumping in no-sun times?
Regards
tree-farmer Steve unruh
Hey Carl, what was the linear current booster worth and where did you get it? You can’t beat those tiny shurflo pumps for gallons pumped to watts used.
Like everything these days, its available on amazon. I paid $128.70 for it. And yeah, those pumps are pretty great. It will pull up to 100 watts, but only if its pumping up to about 40+ psi. For my current setup i would guess it is pulling more like 75-80.
We dont really get enough wind here to justify trying to put up turbines or wind vanes. I figure I can probably pump up the better part of a seasons worth of water in about a week of sunshine and store it in my large cistern.
Sweden is on fire.
During our time off-grid, off-internet in the mountains, things have happened we were unaware about.
80 wildfires throughout the country. 44 still outof control. Fire departments and military busy everywhere. Additional choppers are called in from Norway, Germany and Lithuania. So are water bombing planes from Italy and France.
While Kristijan, south of the Alps, share the same problems Wayne has, keeping the hay dry, we haven’t had any rain to speak of since the snow melted away. Temps are constantly around 30C throughout the country and 33C (low 90s F) is reported from way north of the Polar Circle, close to the Glacial Sea.
So far no heavily populated areas are affected by the fires. Still only a couple hundred people have been evacuated but we do need rain.
On our way home we saw large areas of birch forests completly yellow. Looked more like September/October.
Most grain suffer from drought. Hay is minimal and many farmers slaughter there animals. Water dams are just about empty and power companies are giving warnings about twice the normal electric prices this coming winter unless we get a very wet fall.
Meanwhile life goes on.
Probably a more consistent choice, although I was -really- hoping you would have opted for the spiral pump. Just because I think they are kind of cool.
https://lurkertech.com/water/pump/tailer/
From the elderberry conversation from like 3 months ago. I thank everyone involved for making me look up what they look like, and apparently those are some of the lovely shrubs I have seen. Apparently since they are poisonous, they have been used to kill off white mildew and insects… Has anyone tried this? Apparently you boil like 5 handfuls of leaves in a liter of water, strain it then spray it.
I just wondered how well it worked. I usually spray for the white powdery mildew with vinegar or neem oil, but this contains alkloids which might be a bit better. Neem oil seems to work better then vinegar, but if this stuff stops it. I am completely about doing it.
JO sorry to hear about the fires. Some people justify the fires saying it is nature’s way of thining the forest for better production. The wood could be better used if people converted vehicles to woodgas and thined the woods by cutting it for fuel. I know of one or two guys who actually do that. TomC
That is a really cool concept, thanks for the link! That might just have to go on the list of “someday” projects. Building a good rotary fitting at the central shaft seems like the only complex part, I love how simple the rest is.
