Yesterday I got stung by a yellow jacket while cleaning out a dry creek bed with my backhoe and I started wondering what my exit strategy should be if I was to dig into a nest of them...again. The last time was two years ago on my small farm tractor while pushing a rotten stump with the blade. The tractor is a whole lot easier to get off of quickly than the backhoe is and luckily somehow, I must have turned the key off before my hasty exit. When thinking finally kicked in again I was about a hundred yards away from my tractor, half my close ripped off, both sholders nearly out of their sockets from all the arm waving and thirty some stings.
Several times every summer.
Spreading topsoil on houselots with a dozer will guarantee getting them riled up every once in a while.The best defense is not moving if you can do it.Nowadays it is common to have a cab on a dozer but I never did until right at the end of my career.Ron G
Yup cut a ground hornets nest in two with the dozer a few years ago. Was kinda hot around there for awhile....................
I hit about three while clearing a tract of land.Two yellow Jackets and one Bubble Bee.Walked through the middle of it and left running. Seen log trucks hauling bee hives whith bees.Good thing the unloader operator had a cab.
i dug one up with an excavator. i just threw the next bucket of dirt on them and that took care of them
keep the machine wide open if you don't swat them and move much they will attack the muffler. try and sit still and you usually only get hit once or twice. smoking a cigarette helps to, the smoke calms them down!
I hit a yellowjacket nest once, digging with a pick. Got stung about 12 times...
I heard of a operator that was seen on top of his Push Cat cab.Reason was he pushed the scraper through a Rattle Snake den.They were all over his Cat.
Now you guys know why track machines have high speed reverse.
Does not moving really work? Or is it as reliable as when you are face to face with a bear?
Been there done that. Don't look forward to next time.
I hit a nest of hornets taking out some old stumps with the dozer, I was lucky to have got it neutral before bailing and running like hell. I was not waiting to find out if I sat still they wouldn't sting......it was a thick cloud and they were pissed
Also had an operator dig up a yellow jackets nest, I had to go back after dark and shut dozer down....................
Yellow Jacket Tale ( and some suggestions) I deal with those SOB'S many times each summer. Here are a couple hints. A dog is our "canary in the coal mine". The yellow jackets have evolved to deal with the most common threats to their nests....low slung digging animals....badgers, possums, bears, foxes etc. In Arkansas, they often use hollows in trees also...small hollows, usually in locust. I was hunting once, and stepped on a nest that collapsed down in a circle 24" across. I have never seen one that big before or since. THEY WILL ALWAYS ATTACK BELOW 36" FIRST.I have looked down at equipment and seen them covering the tires and undercarriage, long before the first sting You might not notice them on your pants for a minute, until they get up above your waist....BUT A DOG ROLLING ON THE GROUND, WHEN WE ARE IN THE WOODS, IS A SIGN TO BOLT. We like a blue heeler...they will stay around while you are working, and start yipping quick enough to get a good heads-up before you are in trouble. Yellow Jackets specialize in stinging on joints...knuckles and knees are their favorites.....I have been stung sometimes, by 20 of them, and 15 of the stings are directly on my knuckles. Okay.....the squeamish need to look away.... The toughest old Texan I knew...I will call him Morris.....was a bridge building foreman. He was an ace operator and tougher than a locust post. One day, Morris was on a D6, when nature made a very urgent announcement that he was to find a place quickly to get rid of last nights dinner. He was preparing camping pads in a National Forest Recreation site. There were campers at nearby sites, and no porta - potties available. The latrine for the campsite would require that he walk through the whole campground to access it, and he knew he wouldn't make it. Ever the Texan....Morris just pushed a pile of dirt up, set his blade over the bare spot, idled the dozer and climbed between the blade and the front of the machine......He dropped his drawers and proceeded with the rest of the plan.....You guessed right......he had scraped the top off of a yellow jacket nest. He described that by the time he realized what was happening, he had 100-150 of them attached to his butt. He tried to swat them off, gave up as they swarmed his face, yanked up his drawers with them inside, and headed away from the machine. By then, the pain and the dose of poison was making him light headed, and he knew he could not get back up on the dozer. He headed for his pickup and home. He called another employee, and told them to carefully go and shut the dozer off....and said that he had never been so sick before. He described the shuddering shakes, like he had Malaria, and he threw up for 12 hours. He couldn't hold any whiskey down to blunt the pain, and was not going to go to the emergency room. His wife counted 150+ stings..... about 2/3 on his rear, the rest on his face and hands. Except for white faced hornets, the yellow jacket sting is the worst in the woods. NEXT TALE...the dozer operator who pulled up his pants with a brown recluse spider in them and had a lemon sized rotting sore on one cheek for 3 months !!!!!
yellow jackets release a scent when they sting that draws the others...... I was feeding a fire one night with a backhoe and thumb ......had the cab door open......i didnt see them till one hit me on the eye....bailed out went back later and shut the machine down.....now i close the cab door at night
If you can stand the heat, wear a wool sweater that is too thick for them to penetrate to the skin.
When i used to fall trees out in the bush, I also used a head net that they could'nt penetrate.
I guess keeping the cab door closed at night would be the best option.
I was mowing a field with an open tractor and ran over a yellow jacket nest. I saw the swarm coming and jumped off the tractor and ran like hell. In my haste I left the tractor running and in gear so when I got a safe distance away I turned to watch the tractor continue without me. I mowed with the gas pedal instead of hand throttle so the engine went to idle and the tractor stalled out when it hit a tree. It was at such a low speed there was no damage, and I avoided getting stung. It sure must have been a funny sight to watch!
I was bushogging one day when i looked down to see a hornets nest, i grabbed some gears and looked back only to get hit 5 times in the face.
Ohh Yahhh ! ... I was doing a land shaping job around a new house project with the excavator .... there was an old rotten big stump that had to go ..... I ripped into it, bucket and thumb, tore it to shreds ...... outta nowhere came a swarm of big black huge hornets, by the hundreds ..... they attacked my machine everywhere (one of the times where I was glad everything was closed up tight in the cab) ... they were flying into the glass so hard I thought someone was shooting me with a rapid fire bb-gun ..... coulda been the making of a new Hitchcock movie :cool2...LOL ... I just kept smashing the crap out of that stump until nothing was moving any more. Since then when I'm in rough wild bush I run with all windows closed ..... That's my story and i'm sticking to it .....
Though it will not help in every case, we keep a can of the "Sprays to 25'....Kills the whole nest" Wasp and Hornet spray in EVERY piece of equipment. We also keep a can in the farm pickup, the bucket of tools that holds the chain saw felling wedges and tools....AND....we have spare cans to grab whenever we go out. We have mounted the cans in pieces of 3" DWV PVC that we mount like fire extinguisher holders. We even have a can on the riding lawn mower. We empty at least 2-3 a year on nests. The cans can be bought for less than $2. each at the end of the summer season in most big-box home stores....they want to get rid of the stock, and offer deep discounts. We buy a half-dozen every year.
A friend of mine was pushing brush and pushed over a tree that had a nest of africanized bees he was stung over 2000 times (normal anything over about 350 is fatal according to his doctor). He was in critical condition for about a week. He said they quit when he was on the ground and unable to move.
Last summer the wife was working in the yard around where we had a couple of stumps ground out. I had just come home and was sitting in back room where the sliding door is and turned on the TV with a cold brew in the other hand. The program showed some kind of action scene with lots of screaming and pounding on things. Something didn't seem right and I looked out the slider and the wife was doing the screaming and pounding. In my semi lucid state I didn't know whether to laugh or panic and luckily for her I panicked and opened the door. She flew in with half a cloud behind her, whipped off her clothes, ran into the bathroom and slammed the door. I killed at least two dozen of the mobile hypodermics before trying the knob on the bathroom door. She still had four buzzers stuck in her hair that took a pair of pliers to safely extricate. They had left fourteen individual drilling sites and she felt crappy for a couple of days. Last week she found another underground nest and I'm here to tell you that you do get faster with age and experience when there is enough pain involved. She got stung only twice. She also didn't have to wait for a dimwit to open the door this time. I don't mind fixing the screen at all.
Is any brand better than another? We had a honey bee nest establish in the exterior wall of our shop and the exterminator pulled down the drywall and sprayed with a can of something and they fell like stones. (We naively asked if he could/would move the nest but he said it was too risky, difficult, and probably unsuccessful.) I wish I remembered what the aerosol can was named but I cant recall. Having a couple cans 'on the ready' seems to be better defense than the usual antics.
Beekeepers will happily remove a swarm of honeybees. Call the beekeepers before you spray the bees.
I usually have good luck leaving the machine running and bail off, yellow jackets tend to go for heat and noise so they start around the engine. If you notice it quick enough and high tail it you can usually make it out unharmed. Please note that gatorguy will not be responsible for any runaway machines that are the result of using this method
This summer wile we were getting one of our trucks ready to haul silage I noticed quite a few bees flying around. I didn't give it much thought until I started hauling. The bees were always flying in and out the window, (no ac on the old Ford hence the open window). Then I realized there was a nest somewhere in the headliner of the cab. I kept making trips for two days and they never got mad nor did I get stung. My lucky day!
Lots of yellow jacket stings while dozing in the woods especially around rock walls.Just a few weeks ago digging out an old concrete foundation I came across these monster 3'' long[NO,I'm not exaggerating] wasps--Accadia killers I believe they were.The scariest moment I had was one time with my headphones on I heard this humming sound so I took them off and there was this huge black wasp with the long tails chewing on the exposed foam.Thank God he didn't go into my ear.I always check now before I put my headphones on now.
Being a kid in the early 1950s in this area N.England hornets seemed to rule as well as great big black&yellow spyders which I freak out. Some time starting in the 60s yellow jackets moved in and seems like they killed these hornets and spyders. Im no expert on this but its been like 45 years since seeing these things. Yellow jackets will attack anything, but worst yet doing with dozer for survey guys I ran over I call them black & white face locals call em mud wasps. Can't run, can't back up and I got drilled by these things and after a good 40 years I still got scars to prove it. Or are they killer bees???
Reminds me now I have to find the bald face hornet's newest location for their nest at my shop.Every year they come back and I don't want a repeat of when I accidentally found them one year under an old front backhoe tire and rim.Thank God I didn't get stung as those things are HUGE.My forest ranger buddy tells me what they do is they first bite you to hold on and then they swing their butt around to get you good.They're smart buggers too--when it was dark I was going to torch them with my flamethrower but I thought the better of it when I saw Mr. Sentry eyeballing me.I couldn't light the match,that b*****d had me frozen.
When I was a little boy, maybe five years old, I stepped into a nest of Yellow Jackets. I didn't know what was going on or why I was being hurt for a while and just stood there. I finally hear my brother telling me to run, he still makes fun of me for just standing there after fifty+ years. I just froze not knowing what was going on. I was stung all over and my mother took me to the hospital and I got stung by a doctor, don't know what the shot was but after all the Yellow Jacket stings I probably didn't even feel the shot. I hate those things, if I get stung I swell up like a balloon.
Dropped the front wheels of a tractor into colony of groundhog holes and the Yellow jackets came boiling out. Ran for my life left the tractor running still in gear (bumped it in as I got off), dig itself in to the frame and run til out of fuel. Back that night to pull it out at the end of a long chain and then bombed the holes with sulphur bombs. Best tactic is to bury them quick. Standing still is asking for more, as they go for heat and as well as movement. Best defense of all is always to buy a cab.
I never dug one up yet but I did find a few walking through the bushes. One time I vividly remember I was about 10 years old or so, we walked to the back of the property with a handful of Germans visiting who wanted to see a big tree. We have a nice fir tree about 7 or 8 feet in diameter way back there and we all marched back there to take a look. I walked off thataways a bit into a bit of an open area to get a look at the top of the tree and suddenly heard a humming sound. The fun started when the buggers started to sting me all over the legs. I screamed and jumped around like a lunatic and took off through the bushes towards home. My dad's best friend decided he was going to help me and grabbed a maple tree branch and started beating the wasps off of me with it as I ran, not sure now what I was more scared of : the wasp blitzkrieg or a lunatic German with a maple branch trying to beat me within an inch of my life... I think I got 30+ stings that day... To this day every time I go back there I think of that nest and just recently they filmed a movie not 50 feet from where that nest used to be... Then last year I had an encounter with a hornet that I'll never forget. I was in my room at home and noticed a hornet buzzing around the window. Not being too keen on getting stung I decided to leave him be. Some time later I came back to my room to change my clothes, all piled neatly in a stack below the window. I also noticed that my hornet was no longer buzzing around the window and assumed he'd flown out through the door which I'd left open. So I grabbed a pair of pants from the neat little pile and put 'em on and as soon as I had them up all the way is when I figured out where the hornet had gone! You guessed it, he stung me right in the family jewels! I don't think I've ever taken a pair of pants off that fast before or since!
Came in drunk at 3:00 am, smelled like a Chinese house of ill repute- told my wife ---- just joking. We were riding horses in rough hilly woods once and after about the 5th horse stepped on a yellow jacket's nest they really came up. One horse got completely down, several got multiple stings and some of the riders got several stings. The horse that got down and another took about a month to recover. Fortunately I was back the trail some and did not get in them. They looked like a black cloud. Greg
One of our local contractor's brothers who was in his 70's was killed by black bees in 2009 after knocking over a dead tree where they had nested with an open cab D7. He had wrapped up as they had found several nests already, but they got to his face and down his neck. What I was told was he never made it off of the dozer. I have stirred up several nests of ground Bees and the key to not getting stung by them is stay as still as possible and keep driving. They go after anything that moves. Went through 14 nests in one moring that way without getting stung before I told the man I was running the tractor for, he could cut it himself. He left the rest of the hay standing.
What is a horses natural instinct in a situation like this? Do they want to run away or do they stay under the control of the rider. Did the horse actually "get down" while being stung or does that mean later when it was sick?
Reminded last week of one reason I got a cab.
Mr. Worn, The horse got down while being stung- I suppose to roll- but there was not enough space. He came out of the woods by himself about 1/2 hour later. We speculated he was dead. The other horse that was badly stung came out following not far behind us. I believe 4 people had to be helped out because their horses had unseated them one way or the other. I guess a horse's instinct depends on the horse as well as the riders response. The horse that got down was broke better than most with a very experienced rider. Some of the horses were getting out one way or the other and back the trail was about the only way to go due the steep, overgrown terrain. The ones of us closer to the back realized something was wrong when 2-3 riderless horses came busting their way back towards us on the narrow trail. I suppose most purely untrained horses would run. Normally it is fight or flight with a horse and I don't see how they could fight yellow jackets. I guess the answer is, "It depends". That is a reliable answer when talking about anything concerning a horse. Greg
If there is water close by they will head for it to drown the bees.Ron G
Not bugs, but an adrenaline rush none the less.... Today, I went to look at a JD 450c a man wanted me to reinstall a track on. It had been sitting in the edge of a swamp since early spring. The brush was over the hood. I crawled under the track that was off, and was looking at the adjuster. I thought, "that's a funny hose, wonder where it goes" Oops, not hose! SNAKE! COTTONMOUTH! REVERSE! he was just sitting there looking at me, like "can I help you?"
I have one for everybody. Not a backhoe story. I would say maybe 4 or 5 years ago, the wife and i were picking up debris and throwing it back in the pile that we did a couple of years before that time. This is an old property than we own. Lots of garbage. Anyway, there was a smashed up cardboard box on the ground and i was afraid to go near it because there was a couple of wasps flying around there. But i needed to get the box back onto the pile, so i carefully walked over to it an grabbed a hold of it and found it was stuck to the ground. So i grabbed it with both hands and pulled on it. Bad mistake! Immediately this swarm of wasps came out of the ground where that box was and my wife and i were both getting nailed. We ran from the area but they were after us. We finally got into the building away from them and we could see them still flying around outside. WOW! What a surprise! We never counted how many bites we got, but it was quite a few. What i still can't figure out though is how one of them managed to get down my pants and bite me between the butt cheeks. Needless to say, we were sore for 3 or 4 days.
Year ago when I had hair 17? I was digging gravel into the IH- 190 and had some yellow jackets buzzing around I swatted them and had one in my hair, was able to flick it out with a stick , the stinger was out ready for me. Some years later I was back scarefiring the Scotch broam out when I ran into a nest of yellow jackets they were flying into the exhaust stack tring to sting it some even were flying throught the exhaust and then crawing over the hood. I dumped it out of gear and let the C-6 run at working throttle. A cat skinner told me to let sit still and let them go after the engine. Thank You Dave. Last year I would have found three nests in the gound only one was a problem for the used engine oil! I have been very lucky for it has been alot of years since I have got stung.
You can watch the Yellow Jackets take off and land busier than JFK Airport. for a while I was doing great until I forgot I should not have moved the bush they were living under.... them Yellow Jackets sure find their way into the cab pretty fast on my backhoe, they are not stupid, after they got hit with the bucket a HUGE group swarming around the Boom Knuckle and swing cylinders as if they were biting the beast that attacked them at the body. Entire machine was swarming from top to bottom, front to back, all in the cab for at least a half hour, hundreds upon hundreds of bees, about 45 min later the swarm was slowly dieing down until a few here and there as if to stand by to warn the others in case of another attack... By the time I jumped off I was hit two times, once more running into the house, once more when in the house...lol it actually felt good on my sore arthritis finger.... the shovel man standing on top the nest didn't get hit once lol... All day long after bees flying all over every where, it must have been a HUGE NEST, seemed like hundreds of Yellow Jackets were coming in for a landing to find out there was no more nest, it had to be that because there were Yellow Jackets flying all over the place around the yard and house where the nest was.
So sorry to hear the guy was killed by Bees... We need more groups of these Scientists that are now working to kill problem bee nests, they go around killing the nests of these bad Yellow Jackets. I forgot where they are based out of, maybe Miami where I seen the documentary on this, not sure, how they do this is they drop raw chicken on the ground, and in no time if there is a bees nest with-in a mile or two the bees find the raw chicken pretty fast, then the team of Scientist follow the bee in what direction it flies off for as long as they can, they keep dropping tiny bits of raw chicken over and over until they find the nest then kill it. this group of Scientists kill hundreds of Yellow Jacket Nests each year. I believe this Yellow Jacket problem is a lot worse than we may know about and realize... I don't know what everybody else is experiencing, but for me I live on a very small patch of land hardly a Quarter Acre Lot and have to deal with a bees nest or two every single year, if I can I ignore it and leave it alone because each year they find a new nesting area. I'm going to start keeping a can of bee spray on the machine, something that can take the heat of the Summer, I'll do what ever it takes to keep some kind of bee killer spray on board, and a lot of it too so I can completely soak my self and all over the cab in order to get out alive and run.
I hit a honeybee hive with the corner of a D8N blade about 12 years ago. It was on a ComEd power line right of way. The guy that owned the hive had a row of about fifteen hives. They were big hives, three sections high. I was pulling a tire truck that was stuck next to them. When I briefly looked back at the truck I nailed one of the hives. What a mess !! It went completely over. The bees came after me and the dozer in huge cloud. I just kept pulling the truck until we got about a hundred feet away from them. The dozer had no cab! I sat very still and watched the bees attack the exhaust stack and the hood of the dozer. When one would come within an inch of me I would not flinch or move. I did not get stung, not even once. Ten years before that I had to go to a hospital emergency room after being stung by two honeybees. I had gone into anaphylactic shock. The attending doctor told me that the next time, one sting could kill me.
Never dug one up but had to climb in the cab of a big Komatsu and spray a nest the buggers build in the roof insulation, only stung once. I did dig up a nest of snakes while loading old tires, harmless but kinda freaky ( I hate snakes)
I don't mean to hijack the thread but the snake references reminded me of my neighbour who asked me to come over and look at his sewer system that had backed up. He had a septic tank with a pump out to a field. The pump ran and the discharge hose was hard so I decided to take a look at the outlet in the field. It was late fall but no more than minor frost. I dug the outlet to where the 1.25" hose ended and saw it was full of water. Hmm what could be the problem? I looked back at the hose again and saw a little red tongue flicking above the water. I got a wire and bent a hook on the end and pushed it down the pipe and when I pulled it back there was a garter snake hooked on the wire. By the time I was finished fishing I had removed 14 snakes. Actually, the last three flew out like the were in a fire hose! The pipe was a nice moist warm place to plan to spend the winter I guess.
that would not be fun
three post thing
and again