Sad to hear that news too. I only had a few chats with Brian unlike with Canary Dave but he always seemed a really nice guy - remember him most I think for prediction leagues.
Morning all... I lost the tactical battle with the hornet on the bedroom last night and got stung... Last time I try to exit them from the house in a humanitarian manner.. My wife got a wasp sting two days ago too. Our absent neighbour has a wasp nest in his roof and they fly over our terrace and in and through our house on the lookout for food... An active policy of clearing the area is now needed Have a good one...
Morning all. Hazy sunshine here at the moment as there is plenty of high level fluffy cloud about. We have a hornet problem as they delight in going for the sweet pears on the very old tree in the garden. The tactic now is to pick the pears just before they are fully ripe and bring them inside where they do ripen. I have a tub and piece of card to remove hornets from the house if they will stay still long enough, but a spray as a final resort. My French neighbour delights in warning us about them as a man in his thirties from the next hamlet died after a sting, and she tells us that you need to get to hospital within the hour for the antidote. Mme did get stung by one when we were on holiday some years ago, and it was very painful, but she is still around I am glad to say. Have a good day whatever you might encounter.
Mme Le Bon is a district nurse that I grew to know quite well as she came and stuck a needle in me everyday for six weeks while I was in plaster. During my quick visit to the bank this morning she was at one of the houses opposite, along with the fire brigade and an ambulance. Judging by the activity I guess she had a daily visit to one of her elderly live alone patients, received no reply, so had called the emergency services. The fire brigade were there to provide the ladder to reach the open first floor window, and the ambulance to provide medical aid. I didn't stand and watch, but by the time I came out of the bank, the ambulance was just heading off towards hospital with blue lights flashing. This very hot weather is a risk for the elderly who are getting frail, and despite all of the care provided by the home helps and neighbours, heat is as big a problem as extreme cold is in winter.
Another hot one.. Into limoges this morning to order veluxes for the attic.. And a shop at the big supermarket. We avoided going to the local annual fete yesterday as we heard it was heaving.. And opted for a evening swim at a local lake.. Planning revenge on wasps and hornets, out a couple of home made traps down.. No interest though... Have a good one
Morning all. Currently 23°C and plenty of cloud about, but expected to rise to 33°C this afternoon, which is a little better than it has been. "The end of the heatwave could arrive at the earliest on Tuesday, August 11, around 9 p.m." This Monday and Tuesday morning, "despite a stormy development over a large part of the country, maximum temperatures will remain generally of the same order as on Sunday in the departments of the north and east of France," explains Météo France, even if they should fluctuate a little due to the cloud cover and the risk of thunderstorms. "The heat will gradually subside a little from the west. A large and stormy degradation should put an end to this scorching episode from Wednesday," it concludes. "This heat wave should be among the 5 most severe experienced by France in recent decades, however it is behind the historic heatwaves of 2003 and 2006." So while I have been looking to see when the heat will calm down, and some rain will arrive on the parched ground, I find another news item that says a Greek island has been hit by flash flooding with the loss of three lives. Our weather seems very unstable these days, but maybe that is due to my forgetfulness. Have a good day whatever the weather.
We tried immitation wasp nests hanging from selected trees - they just laughed at them Can't bear the thought of wasting beer so we use apple juice instead. Some of the advice you receive on this eg. destroy the nests early in the year (anyone ever tried doing this ? ).
There is a report here of some 89 year old man who put his walking stick accidently into a wasps nest and received multiple stings that killed him. Also a 36 year old lady who received a single wasp sting, but she had a reaction to it that killed her. Oh look, we have a storm outside. Could there be rain about?
An interesting podcast about the Watford vs QPR match in 1982 - the Taylor vs Venables match in which Venables complained that we wouldn't let QPR play the way he wanted them to. https://www.theblizzard.co.uk/news/greatest-games-watford-4-qpr-0
I think it may have been the League cup game that season that he complained about our sloping pitch too.
Come home with this super power aerosol spray to fire poison into the nest from 2 metres.. Will make sure I am kitted out. Re traps i read they suggest adding vinegar to put off bees?
If you're going to attack wasp nests Yorkie, be sure to do it at night whatever means you use. One of the most horrible methods I was told about was to eradicate ground nests - all wasps are in the nest at night (unlike hornets) and are non active (they can't see very well in the dark), so if you fill the entry with straw and then set light to it (assuming it's in a safe place for this) then they will all flee the nest (through the heat) but aren't able to fly afterwards. Not very 'green' advice to be giving to another green If the nest is an arial one then it's more difficult. I hasten to say that eradicating wasp nests can only be done with official permission here in Gemany as they qualify as a protected species !
If you spray wasps with water they cannot fly and fall to the ground and if you want you can stamp on them but it's better just to let them live and put them outside imo as they are useful like all life. Don't know if this works with hornets.
I agree about letting them live Scully - all animals are usefull apart from us ! If we disappeared from the earth a few domestic dogs and cats might miss us for a while, but nature would breath a sigh of relief. I've tried the spraying with water bit and it does work (particularly if mixed with lemon juice) - to be honest I've never had any problem with hornets - they knock on the windows at night, attracted to light, but they don't seem to be aggressive. In fact they hunt wasps.
The problem nest is the wasp nest which is two metres from our terrace... We have now both been stung and eating out last night was impossible... I have never even considered such an action but for some reason this summer our lives are targeted.. I fact iwas telling my wife to live and let Iive until they were all over us. Meanwhile, change of subject, today we have awoken to half an hour of much welcomed rain! Have a good one!
Morning all. Very hot again and we are promised storms, rain and hail throughout the day. The rain that was supposed to arrive at 10.15 am passed by to the west of us. Probably just as well that I did the watering last night. There have been a lot of electronic message boards erected in the locality over the past couple of years, and when I made my trip to the bread dispenser the one there was displaying the message to be careful not to start a fire. The last big one that we had in the area was started by a council workman with his grass cutting machine. As he went along the roadside verge he hit a stone, the blades on stone created a spark, and bingo a hedge followed by a field was blazing away. There have been some reports from the south coast of complete campsites being wiped out by fire, but I haven't seen yet reports of complete hillsides and woods on fire that happens most years down there. Have a good and safe day whatever you are doing.
Morning all. The rain, hail and storms passed us by yesterday, and although the forecast for today tells me it is now raining I can assure them at the Météo that it isn't. The talk about insects reminds me that I am awaiting a package. Waspeze was a spray that you could buy to give relief from stings of all sorts. Made in France, but not sold here, we used to get a new spray when in England. For unknown reasons they stopped making it in 2011, but we found a substitute called Jungle bite and sting relief, which once again is not sold in France. I discovered that only Amazon UK has it and is prepared to send it abroad, so placed an order for a couple of cans. This is made in Dublin, but the stock is held in Dunfermline, so it has been despatched to Rochester before making its way across the Channel which it has done, and now is in the north of the country. The economics of making the product, shipping it around, and still only costing £4.99 a can is somewhat difficult to grasp. Have a good day whatever you are doing.
