kosh

No invasion of wasps here but there a lot of crane flies/daddy long legs in the last few weeks. The things are everywhere. I have never noticed them this bad before.

Canada Jane

I appear to be the only one experiencing mad wasps. We don't have any fruit trees to attract them and we have checked for nests and found none, but there are definitely a lots of them about.

I was in town the other day getting our truck serviced and was outside chatting to one of the salesmen and he was being plagued by them. They seem to leave me alone, but he had several flying around and landing on his shoulders.

Horrible things.

G77

Yuck! I read somewhere that wasps are attracted to people who are diabetic, as they give off a sweet smell from the unprocessed sugar - don't know how true that is, sounds a bit far fetched, but you never know....

I'd rather have the bear in my garden that you had a few weeks ago rather than wasps!

moondevil

ok....this maybe nothing to do with wasps, but on our last recci to ontario
We passed trees with webs on them

What are these things in the trees
they take over a section of the tree and inside the web the leaves are dead ????

We didnt get close enough to take a picture, as im scared of bees <yellow jackets> and spiders and they were loads of them, but small compared to the ones that live in my house....lol

G77

You don't read Jane's blog then?

http://www.canadajane.com/?p=387

moondevil

thanks g77

no i was to busy looking at lovely pics of animals

Phew, so glad they are not man eaters

gill

Canada Jane

We saw these big ones at a local provincial park - yuk.

Jerseygirl

We get those in New Jersey. I've no idea what makes them but all the leaves encased by the web die.

OK I didn't read any of the previous posts...now I see the mystery's been solved.

Steve_P

They're Tent Catapillars aren't they?

Canada Jane

Indeed they are. Not spiders thank God or I might have been getting on a flight back to the UK!

Steve_P

They can really devastate areas of forest. I've seen the results of infestations when driving through B.C.

Horrible creatures.

Jerseygirl

How big are the catapillars...the size of a small snake?

moondevil

Hate snakes as well

We stopped at port sanley, ontario and they was all over the trees locally.
They just kill off the leaves.

Thanks jane, i can live with them, so glad they are not spiders, will tell the kids as well as we all thought they where man eating spiders

Gill

snowbunny

Depends on the exact species, but usually no more than an inch long. We used to play with them as children, they definitely don't bite!

(Texas: where insects are your playthings)

iaink

Actually, they might not be.

Tent caterpillars make their tents in the Vs between the branches close to the trunk,


the ones that wrap around the outer extremities are "Fall Webworms"