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"Des Higgins" wrote in message
. ie...

"Tim C." wrote in message
...
Following up to Rusty Hinge 2 :

The message
from Tim C. contains these words:
On Wed, 01 Feb 2006 21:28:49 +0000, Dave Poole
wrote:
Janet Baraclough wrote:

Each queen wasp will be the mother of a whole new colony by summer.

... which will result in the eradication of thousands of caterpillars
and other garden pests, so think twice before you kill the queen
wasp.

Last summer I saw a wasp hunting and catch a honeybee from some
flowers in the garden. It flew with it to our small cherry tree and
hanging on by 3 legs from a leaf, carefully bit the head off the bee.
It then bit all the legs off letting them fall to the ground and
finally proceeded to eat out the abdomen like a döner kebab.


Are you sure it was a wasp? They usually take prey back to the nest.
(I've never heard of them taking a bee, either.)

Could it have been a hornet? I do know the difference but I can't be
certain what it was now - last Summer's along time for my poor head.

I have never seen a hornet in teh UK but the ones on teh continent are
simply HUGE. They blot out the sun.
Basically they look like normal wasps except for size. UK wasps do bite
heads of bumble bees although I have never seen it.

Well I hate wasps and will kill them if I see them. I have felt guilty
about my unreasonable fear of them and killing them since people say how
they are good for the garden but since I actually like bumble bees and will
happily hold them in my hands and have never been stung by one, but have
been stung by nasty viscious wasps, at least this post has given me the
excuse I needed. Wasps are back on my hit list and I don't feel a twinge of
guilt. I'll be swatting, squishing and drowning the nasty stripey creechers
at every opportunity.