We got the first snowfall today...

I'm praying for a harsh, freezing winter, so the wasp population gets sufficiently diminished. We had an absolute plague of the horrendous things last summer because our winter was too mild.
 
That's probably not good, as wasps are good pest control. I'm not sure if people are crazy enough to do gardening in the winter in your area, though.

I'm probably lucky I get mostly the paper wasp variety, but they're not going anywhere since the winters here a super mild.
 
No snow here yet, and according to the weather forecast it seems like it's going to be that way for a while.
 
Dr. Mario said:
That's probably not good, as wasps are good pest control. I'm not sure if people are crazy enough to do gardening in the winter in your area, though.

I'm probably lucky I get mostly the paper wasp variety, but they're not going anywhere since the winters here a super mild.

They're supposed to die off during the winter here though. Then the survivors build new colonies and shit. But because that didn't happen, we had way too many last year.

Personally, I have my doubts that the common yellowjacket is really doing a significant amount of pest control. They're very attracted to human settlements and seem to prefer scavenging for food in discarded leftovers and from man-made products, not eating whatever natural resource they're supposed to eat. Whatever pest they're supposed to fight, I can't imagine they're doing a whole lot of that when there's plenty other, more easy opportunities around to get nutrients.
 
Ugh, so you have yellowjackets around these parts? If you look up paper wasps, they're the most docile of the wasps. Yeah, they still build stuff on human settlements, but they're definitely the least aggressive of wasps. They're scary, but most approachable. I'm glad I have those instead of yellowjackets since the winters here probably don't even qualify as winter in your area. Anyway, on pest control, there's a whole lot of them. Maybe some are gathering human stuff, and others are out pollinating and killing pests. What you're seeing is probably a select amount.
 
Yeah, I'm mostly talking about yellowjackets. They're colloquially called "wasps" here because they're the most apparent due to their intrusiveness. I'm aware of paper wasps, and I know there's a lot of other kinds of wasps that do contribute heavily to pest control. I'm just not sure their yellowjacket cousins are doing their part anymore.

Personally, I could do without them. Instead there could be a few more bees around. Those are usually way more pleasant.
 
Dr. Alphys said:
We had an absolute plague of the horrendous things last summer because our winter was too mild.

well the only thing i noticed out of the usual were mosquitos in october.

that sucked.
 
freakworld said:
Dr. Alphys said:
We had an absolute plague of the horrendous things last summer because our winter was too mild.

well the only thing i noticed out of the usual were mosquitos in october.

that sucked.
Those are even worse than wasps, lol. I rarely encounter them myself nowadays, but we do sometimes get them in October. It makes me wonder how they even spawn, thanks to the drought.
 
Hehe...I live in Florida, and the last time we had snow was in '89.
 
I watched the news last night, and the Washington DC area got a coating of snow last night. However, I didn't get any snow here in New Jersey.
 
Well, weeks into fall... this is an unusually dry fall season.

Meanwhile, Northern California gets slammed with snow. Daaaaamn it... D:

Speaking of the devil: I hear rain now. Won't last for long, though.
 
Nozomi Toujou said:
today the car got iced shut
One that happened to my car, and then someone yanked on the passenger door too hard and broke the handle, so it wouldn't open the door even after the ice was gone - it had to be opened from the inside, and it was months before we got the handle replaced.

</cautionary tale>
 
And here I am, in 90 degree weather

---- the Santa Ana winds
 
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