Billions of electronic-eating invade Texas!

This year I've nearly had a two insect problems but I managed to control them both before they became really bad.

I discovered a wasp building a nest inside an old grass seed box in the shed. I waited until the wasp was inside the box, closed the box and dumped it in the hedge at the back of the garden (I don't mind wasps in the bushes, they help to control other pests). The stupid wasp kept going back to the shed in search of its nest and I discovered it building a new one a few days later. I waited until the wasp was away and sprayed some insecticide on the nest and it didn't come back. Hopefully it had the sense to build a new nest somewhere else. I didn't want to kill it, wasps are good in the right place.

A bit later on in the year I noticed some bees flying around the house so I kept catching them in a glass and throwing them out. I discovered there were lots of them in the bathroom and were flying in and out of the extractor fan, they were obviously trying to build a hive in there. I turned the fan on and loads of bees shot out of the vent outside. I sprayed a very small amount of insecticide (hopefully not enough to kill them all, we need all the bees we can get in this country) inside the bathroom which the fan running and they decided not to come back.

I don't think the bees were attracted to the electronics inside the fan, they just decided it was a nice sheltered place to nest.

Hero999 said:

This year I've nearly had a two insect problems but I managed to control them both before they became really bad.

Click to expand...

Pretty feeble 'troubles' compared to other countries

There's not really any serious insect pests in the UK - too bleeding cold!.

I take cold over fire ants any day

HarveyH42 said:

Fire Ants don't have any natural threats, they just don't like the cold (bet the Canadians are laughing right now).

Click to expand...

MUHAAHAHAHAHAH
Never seen a fire ant in my life

Don't worry Harvey, it's not just the canadians. We're all poking fun at lil ol' america with its fire ant problem

I've only seen fire ants in documentaries (and CSI ) but regular soldier ants can be dangerous enough in large numbers, without the ability to spit a potent venom over a metre in the air

I heard an interesting story while I was at a wildlife preserve: there was a massive ant-hill and a neighbouring tree where millions of ants are constantly collecting sap, fruit, small insects, etc. for the colony; the path between them was affectionately called the ant motorway

The last person to be foolish enough to step on the ant motorway had to be stripped off, hosed down, and rushed to hospital to treat the hundreds of bites he received and those were normal ants

Its still a somewhat common practice by some people who make the animal skeleton displays for taxidermy work to just put the carcass near a big ant hill for a while and let the ants clean it up for them. They strip everything right down to the bone and if left to long even the bone may disappear after while too.

Its a cheap, clean, and very effective way to get a full skeleton of a small animal cleaned up that way.
I 've met a few people who make cow bone ornaments and stuff who also use that method as well.

Well if they like eating electronics equipment, they are an easy fix! Just put some mesh connected to a high voltage transformer, they'll go to eat it and *fizzle*

things said:

Well if they like eating electronics equipment, they are an easy fix! Just put some mesh connected to a high voltage transformer, they'll go to eat it and *fizzle*

Click to expand...

That sounds... safe?

They had the episode on SABC tv in South Africa 2 days ago, along with the dramatic music, and dramatic scenes and clips. It was affecting Bee County, lots of men with gray beards where doing research or implementing the solution - introduce it's natural enemy - some fly - which would lay eggs in the body of the fire ant which would then be eaten from the inside .... yikes!

So this fly - like the fire ant it is not natural to the USA, I wonder about introducing this alien to take care of the other. Opening a can of maggots, it seems to me.

It seems unlikely that a fly which lays its eggs in the body of a fire ant is going to do any more than act as a nuisance for the fire ants. Their numbers are practically immeasurable.

giftiger_wunsch said:

It seems unlikely that a fly which lays its eggs in the body of a fire ant is going to do any more than act as a nuisance for the fire ants. Their numbers are practically immeasurable.

Click to expand...

Any data to support that assertion?

Bio-remediation is a proven method to control various pests. Consider BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) and B. popilliae (controls the Japanese beetle). It is actually quite a profitable industry. You would be amazed at the numbers of organisms, eggs, and spores being produced commercially. B. popilliae spores are produced in a specific grub. Can you imagine actually trying to grow grubs, buy the ton, for fun and profit. A friend and I were about to get started in that business when he tragically got hit by a truck while riding his bicycle.

John

jpanhalt said:

Any data to support that assertion?

Bio-remediation is a proven method to control various pests.
John

Click to expand...

Cane toads were introduced to Aust to control the sugar cane beetle. They have found so many other good things to eat that they have lost their appetite for the beetle. The population has exploded & they have no predators to control them. Their only use is for golf practice.
Maybe more care could be taken in the proving stage

Neither my comment nor the remediation proposed for fire ants suggested utilizing vertebrates as the control organism. There are huge differences between invertebrate parasitology and vertebrate feeding preferences. In the case of invertebrates, host specificity can be extremely narrow (consider human malaria as an example), and the parasitic relationship has evolved over millennia. The mosquitoes and organisms that cause human malaria simply don't have a choice.

The errors that have been made in Australia and elsewhere using vertebrates are unfortunate. I think it would be valuable to look at the history of those decisions, who made them and with what degree of reflection and science were they made.

Clearly, any control needs to be tested, regardless of whether it is biological or chemical. Unfortunately, politics and politicians make the decisions and ignore the science. That's the main reason why we don't have DDT as a pesticide.

John

jpanhalt said:

Neither my comment nor the remediation proposed for fire ants suggested utilizing vertebrates as the control organism. There are huge differences between invertebrate parasitology and vertebrate feeding preferences. In the case of invertebrates, host specificity can be extremely narrow (consider human malaria as an example), and the parasitic relationship has evolved over millennia. The mosquitoes and organisms that cause human malaria simply don't have a choice.

The errors that have been made in Australia and elsewhere using vertebrates are unfortunate. I think it would be valuable to look at the history of those decisions, who made them and with what degree of reflection and science were they made.

Clearly, any control needs to be tested, regardless of whether it is biological or chemical. Unfortunately, politics and politicians make the decisions and ignore the science. That's the main reason why we don't have DDT as a pesticide.

John

Click to expand...

Just a slight correction on your terminology, Insects are not invertebrates as they have an exo-skeleton. Insects are Arthropods.

Mikebits said:

Just a slight correction on your terminology, Insects are not invertebrates as they have an exo-skeleton. Insects are Arthropods.

Click to expand...

Hi Mike,

Insects are invertebrates. Being a vertebrate means having a spinal column, not a skeleton. Insects have exoskeletons, but no spinal column. All arthropods are invertebrates.


Regards,

Torben

Hmm, I do know what invertebrate is, but I was thinking arthropods were given a separate classification do to the exo-skeleton, perhaps I am in error. Thanks Torben.

Okay, I am leaning towards you and JP being right, but ...

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Insects are different from most other invertebrates. They are the largest Class of organisms and account for over 75% of all animal species. Insects can be separated from other invertebrates as they generally have 6 legs and conform to a common body plan. This body plan comprises of 3 parts, the head, thorax and abdomen although some parts may be more distinct than others. Particular insect orders may have some structures absent, reduced or greatly modified and some young stages can appear very different from their mature adult form.[/FONT]

Click to expand...

According to my Zoology teacher, Taxonomist are in disagreement as to whether insect should be classified in separate group. But as current text books stand, I am in error.