“It’s None of Your Bees Nest!” By Gene W. Edwards. Posted 8/4/2024.

I’ve been fighting with wasps on our place incessantly for the last 10 days. Some 300 of them found nesting refuge in a 5’ deep window well, in a bunch of boards and clutter at the bottom of it, boards that fell from the top that covered the wide window-well.

I went out and bought cans and cans of wasp spray but . . . I mistakenly thought it was W.A.S.P. spray to use against White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. “Hey!” they raged, “You should not be doing that! We are people too!”

That’s when I started spraying the yellow jackets, so easily recognized by their debonair yellow jackets, natty bow ties, dressy trousers, and spiffy shoes. For my efforts to eradicate them and fish the boards and the trash out of the window-well with a long-handled four-claw garden tool, in five or six days I was wasp-stung six times, including four times in a row by one angry wasp stinging me through my sock! Yeah, a wasp can sting you over and over.

All this threw my immune system into overdrive for days: itching, swelling of my feet and ankles, calves, legs . . . and panic — fight or flight — every time wasps flew near me to attack me again.

*****

It was particularly after that multiple-sting, the fourth one, that I declared war on wasps, mostly the ones in my open-top RV enclosure where the window-well is! I’ve swatted and killed at least a 100 of them, and I also sprayed the window-well’s recess thoroughly with a dozen…