Wasp sucking machine XL

A small storage building next to my big garage workshop has got a wasp nest by the door, and I got stung while taking my bike out of it.

This, of course, calls for revenge :)

I wanted to use my wasp sucking machine, except I didn't have that with me.

I was thinking of building something on the spot, but this shop happens to be a complete mess right now, because I have been moving things this way and that so I can drive my motorized scaffold along the walls to paint. So I really wasn't in a position to build much.

I thought about using my cheap dust collector to suck them up, but then the wasps would all be inside, with no good way to get rid of them.

But I did have my homemade blower kicking around, which still had the box from my fiberglass filter experiment on it, including the bug screen.

So I only needed to make a front panel for it. I connected it with a dust collector fitting (borrowed off a machine) and some old dryer hose suck the wasps in.

I carefully positioned the hose near the entrance to the nest, using a few scraps of wood to hold it in place.

I then left it in place while doing some more painting in the workshop.

It was very effective, the larger hose allows for much more air flow than my last experiment, so a larger proportion of the wasps that came and went got sucked in.

Unfortunately, this version of the wasp sucker doesn't have a clear window to view the catch. So I pulled the hose off the blower to have a look inside.

Seeing the light, the wasps immediately started to crawl towards it to get out. They didn't try flying out (too much airflow), and as soon as they got to the edge of the plastic flange, the airflow would suck them back in.

I have to say, that was the coolest thing to see, all these angry wasps crawling towards me, with nothing between them and me, yet they still couldn't reach me. Of course, a power failure would surely have turned the tables on me!

I didn't have a good way to kill them, so at the end of the day, I just stuffed some fiberglass into the hole, and put the box in a shed.

Five days later, I checked on the wasps. By this time, there weren't any noises from the box, even on shaking it. But once I opened it up, some of the wasps started to stir, and some to even fly. So five days wasn't long enough for them all to die. Maybe a full week would have done the job.

I dumped out the wasps on the ground, and stomped all over them, to make sure they were all good and dead.

And yes, a can of raid could have solved the problem in the first place, but what's the fun in that? Plus, I couldn't get at the actual nest, and I'm not sure spraying raid at the hole where they came in and out would have done much.

And if you are wondering why only a small article this week? Well, I'm working on another homemade woodworking machine. These things take time.

See also:

Previous wasp sucking machine