4,767 Forum Posts by "Rage"
Here's a view of all the wasps one last time before I tossed them all in the trash, in case you doubt the number. It's really hard to describe the feeling you get when you shovel hundreds of small, flying, dead killing machines in to a container.
Some of them have been cropped out.
Here is another closeup of another portion of the nest.
You can see the full resolution image here.
Obligatory closeup
Here is an image of the final count.
Any guesses?
Three hundred eighty (380) bald-faced hornets are in this container. I didn't even bother counting all the larvae. There were at LEAST that many larvae within the hundreds of segments of the nest. Considering the bees which I know I didn't count, that makes for a prospective wasp count of around 800 (as the nest was at the time). You can just feel the weight of all the dead wasps when you pick up this container.
It's a good thing it was taken care of when it was, or else the problem only would have become larger.
Here is the nest with most of its outer covering stripped away
This is when I've reached a count of 200, with much remaining to go...
Here's a closeup of some wasps and larvae on the sidewalk (And what's probably a bunch of wasp crap). Some animal or insect is probably gorging itself on them as I type this.
At 7/27/08 05:48 PM, TheLoneReviewer wrote:
The only ones that sting and bite here are yellow-jackets; Nasty fuckers, they dig into you with their jaws and then try to sting any surface that presents itself. And they are as aggressive as hell.
These are a variety of yellow jackets, I've read. We have them everywhere here, too. Heck, it's the mascot of the city I live in.
Here is an image of when my count reached 100. Yes, there is a hundred of them in this container. Looking at the nest, it doesn't even look like I started counting them. It quickly dawns on me that there are a lot more of them than I thought.
An outside view of the count in progress.
Keep in mind that my hands are enormous, in case you were trying to use them as a reference for scale.
My desire to quantify this event in one way or another was strong, so I started counting the dead wasps.
Number one.
Here is a closeup of the main pileup that accumulated at the bottom of the nest.
Here's a shot of the bottom of the nest once most of the lower outer covering has been removed.
I tear away a larger piece of the nest and an innumerable amount fall out, all of them dead. All the larvae seem to be alive, but there isn't one fully developed wasp that is. My father estimated that around 80 wasps attacked him last week. Looks like that was the tip of the iceberg.
Being attacked by this nest could have seriously messed somebody up.
I clear away a bit more of the paper and take a look inside. At this point it becomes apparent that this thing is absolutely packed with wasp larvae. Almost every hexagonal segment has one inside, all of them in various stages of development. You can only see the bottom "floor" in this picture, too.
See how the nest is forming a cupped shape in the bottom half of the picture? It's completely full of dead wasps.
By the way, all the larvae are alive and still wiggling around.
Little bastards are just starting spill out of the thing at this point...
At 7/27/08 04:49 PM, solardave wrote:
That is pretty damn cool, I assume the wasps were dead by now then?
Of course. It's the only reason why I'm probably not at the hospital right now.
Here's a closeup of when I started to peel away more of the nest paper. This thing was just bursting at the seams with dead wasps. I felt like at any second this thing would just explode with them.
Here is a closeup of a piece of paper I tore from the nest. Sorry, people, but I think it's pretty damn cool.
Here is a closeup of the nest before I started to open it.
The paper is actually pretty damn cool. You can see how it's a composite of all the varieties of wood the wasps used to build it. You can also see a larvae that has fallen down as well.
We let this thing sit for a large part of today before even coming near it. I got out a large pair of clippers and started to remove the nest. I could see that the entrance to the nest was completely stuffed with dead bees. A half dozen dead bees would fall out at the slightest jostle.
Here it is laying on our sidewalk immediately after removal from the tree. I had to make four or five cuts just to get the thing off. You can see how they build the thing around several branches of the tree.
Jesus Christ, people. Look at this thing that was hanging in a tree ten fucking feet away from our front door.
This wasn't here a week ago. In fact, I don't think it was even here a few days ago. Otherwise I probably would have been owned by this thing when I mowed the lawn. It was low-hanging, only about four feet above the grass.
It's a nest full of bald-faced hornets. My father was stung around 16 times by them while doing yard work about a week ago. We figured that they were underneath our front sidewalk since he saw them coming out of the ground. They probably moved to the tree nearby after we sprayed insecticide all over the place.
We sprayed the nest last night when all the bees should have been inside. I'll show you a handful of crazy-ass pictures. I'll tell you how many bodies I counted once I post all the images.
We begin with the nest as of yesterday shortly after its discovery. The wasps you see on it are alive and well, probably continuously making this monstrosity larger.
Wow, you're already on Google, so use it.
In summary, he was a really cool guy who did a lot to help people advance in the area of computing. It is sad to hear that he has passed.
Nice job reading the article, topic starter. Her name was Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. Yes, that whole thing.
Topic restart, I guess.
At 7/24/08 11:10 AM, x-Exodus-X wrote: Nah. With all the ad revenue Tom and Wade are getting, not to mention the merchandise they sell, I reckon they'd pull in that much cash within 2 or 3 years.
... and the vast majority of it would go to paying bandwidth fees. Tom is also the owner of the site. Wade is "just" an employee like the rest of the team.
The site is worth more than twice that. Tom could have already sold out, but he didn't. The website is like his kid -- you just don't sell that kind of thing!
Oh, and I forgot to mention. It's rather useless to go around on forums polling people. There are usage statistics that you can find out there.
2560 x 1600
... but I still hate large websites and think they all should be made in 800x600 when possible. It's personally less annoying to me and it's good practice anyway.
You people sure take a long time to say nothing...
We have enough of these "by/to your level icon" threads. I think not. You didn't even try.
Awesome. I get to ban like a half dozen people for chain posting.
And a knife baked in to the bread? The guy probably planted it there so he could sue the company. That doesn't seem terribly uncommon nowadays.
