Birds & Bees... and Aphids

We began the Summer with a serious aphid problem in our garden. Our beautiful organic fennel plants, pumpkins, artichokes and others were covered with millions of the tiny dark-green pests. Not only were they unsightly and disgusting, they were damaging the plants. I joked about scraping them off with a butter knife and making a spread for crackers or bread.

A month or so ago, I noticed that some wasps were constructing a paper nest underneath the eaves above the redwood deck. I considered the potentially painful encounters and plotted how I might rid our home of the wasps. I never use any poison. I figure that if it is bad for the pest, it's bad for me and my family, too. I came up with a safe non-toxic plan, but then something miraculous happened in my garden that caused me to rethink my agenda.

While I was picking some fresh basil for the balsamic vinegar & olive oil dressing I was making, I noticed that nearly all of the aphids were gone, and those remaining were quickly being hunted down and collected by the wasps who's demise I had been plotting. I decided to let the wasps remain for a bit longer. There were only eight of the little buzzers, and they had proven to be more beneficial than problematic, but I knew that their days were numbered. I didn't want a huge nest of stinging wasps right outside my bedroom door.

The Experiment

I considered lots of different creative ways to deal with the wasps, but after a little experiment I conducted with an individual wasp, I knew how I would proceed. A lone wasp had flown into an opened door, so I captured it in a small Mason jar, that I then placed inside the freezer. When the wasp was fully frozen, I removed him from the jar and placed him in a web of Sparky, one of our largest house-spiders. Sparky made his way across the web to investigate, then reached out with two legs and touched the frozen wasp. The spider pulled his legs back, and seemed to ponder the lucky find for a short moment, then made a few knitting strokes to secure the wasp. I assumed that he might wrap his snack up for later, but after minimally securing the frozen dinner, Sparky sunk his teeth into the wasp, and spent the next day and a half in that position. It was interesting to watch Sparky plump up as the wasp shriveled away. It would have been wonderful on sped-up-video or time lapse.

Plan 9 From Inner Space

I worry about our spiders in the winter months because there are no pests like flies, mosquitoes or moths for them to catch in their webs. The poor little guys get so skinny too, it's really sad. Freezing a single wasp worked so well that I figured if I could freeze the entire wasp nest, then there would be ample food for Sparky, Pete, Snicker, Dandy, Joe and Dinky all Winter long. But, how to freeze an entire wasp nest that by now had twenty busy wasps and lots of larvae maturing too. I decided to freeze the nest with compressed nitrogen. It was too easy. All I had to do was wait until all the wasps were sleeping and I'd freeze them instantly then place them into a large Mason jar and store in the freezer until winter, when the spiders start looking skinny.

I removed my heavy wooden 12' ladder from the garage and set it up on the deck beneath the wasp nest. I left the ladder out over night, knowing that the wasps would be docile in the cool morning air and easier to manage. All I had to do was wake up, climb the ladder, freeze the nest and collect it while Mighty Mo gets the entire event on video. Easy!

Catch a Buzz

I woke up to the sound of a bird hopping around on the ladder located outside my sliding bedroom door. I peeked out to see what was going on, but the bird was nowhere to be seen, so I crawled back in bed and went back to sleep. After laying there for another hour or so, I decided to get up and take care of the wasps. Mighty Mo and I got the supplies together, and I walked out onto the deck to assess the activity in the hive, only to discover that the entire nest was gone! The only thing remaining was one dead wasp on an upper step of the ladder, and a partial wasp body fragment on another step. It must have been quite a battle. Apparently, the bird I had heard earlier had perched atop the ladder where it was close enough to the hive that it could hop up and harvest the sleeping wasps. He eventually removed and flew off with the entire hive full of larvae and a big juicy queen -complete with the paper nest. Yummy.