So we have a pear tree in our back yard that decided this was the year it was going to successfully bear fruit.
Its been extremely dry and we’ve been away a lot so I haven’t cut the grass in about 8 weeks. I didn’t even notice the tree had ripe fruit on it until yesterday. Stoked to check it out I walked over to pick some and noticed there’s about ten full grown pears rotting on the ground below the tree that are just absolutely infested with wasps.
The tree is near our fence with the neighbors so I gotta deal with this fast so they don’t get overwhelmed by wasps.
Does anyone know of a safe way to approach this? I broke my ribs and fucked up my back on a dirt bike last weekend so I can’t exactly do anything that requires quick reactions or running away.
Any ideas would be super helpful 🙏
They don’t want to sting you.
Pick the fruit up in the earlyish morning when it’s cool. Do it carefully so you’re not squashing any wasps that are about and you should be fine.
Move slowly and don’t ‘flap’.
Unless you have health problems a couple of stings are painful, but not that bad.
Not long ago I had a Queen wasp fall into my T-shirt resulting in five stings on my back. I dosed up on antihistamines and was OK in an hour or so. - yes, the wasp was captured and safely released.
Maybe they don’t “want” to sting anyone, but wasps can be very territorial and aggressive. Every time I’ve ever been stung by a wasp, I was minding my own business and just happened to piss one off by existing nearby.
I was going to say I have picked up wasp-swarmed fruit (pears, apples, plums) for 25 years and have only been stung by a wasp once – when I stepped on it barefoot. But I realised wasps are probably not the same wasps everywhere and I live on another continent than OP and maybe you.