Giant Wasp museum pt2

Dave Riley — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:20:59 +0000

The leaflet that sparked the whole adventure, (click for larger version) Actually it was also due to Rie's parents getting an infestation of Giant wasps a few months ago.

You can read about the attack-of-the-giant-wasps here

As it’s winter all the live wasps are asleep If you come in summer you can interact with the live wasps (whatever that means) That sounds like a different experience altogether. We did get a discount only 500yen instead of the 1000yen it would be in Summer.

A collection of wasps, the biggest 4cm+

A wasps nest

Us in front of a load of wasps nests

These wasps build their nests anywhere

See what I mean?

This one has the side cut away to reveal an internal structure with several "floors"

Austin was nervous of these nests, can't blame him really

They cultivate these nests by hanging these ornaments upside down and making a great place for the wasps to build their nests on

Let me tell you about the bears and the bees! Alternative version.

Not everyone finds this stuff interesting.

The wasp protection suit

Lots of these good luck cats

Not even Budda escapes.

This is the main wasp guy, he loves them you can tell.

Its the honeycomb middle that weighs so little

The nest has hit the fan now

This will take 4 photos to show

Can you guess what it is yet?

You must know by now

It's a bullet train nest

These ones are big

This ones a record breaker, goes over 2 floors

Leading to a whole new vast room of even more nests!

I'm only using about a 1/3 of the photos I took here as there are sooo many nests and so little time. (they are getting a bit samey to be honest)

Heres one of the volcano, a local obsession.

Not sure what this is about, I don't understand how they manipulate the wasps into doing these custom designs for them.

That is my favourite so far, if I was them I'd have this one out front.

A huge slab of a nest.

The nests seem to go on for miles.

This one just seems wrong somehow.

Dear me

This one has a hat on, I really hope there isn't a human under that.

not sure what these are

Not sure what to say

We are all wasps when it comes down to it.

And so it's time to go. We've learned a lot.

But still there are many questions unanswered

Attack of the Giant Wasps

Dave Riley — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 17:23:17 +0000

It sounds like a 1960s Japanese si-fi ‘B’ movie plot but it’s true.

Rie (My better half) and the kids are in Japan staying with her parents. Well they have a Japanese Giant Hornet (or Wasp) problem. Sounds scary enough I hate normal wasps, then I did a bit of searching on the internet…

WTH! Those things are horrible.

You can read about these monsters here Wikipedia Article

Here is a video of them attacking a honey bee hive:

Interestingly this hive is not a native Japanese hive as the native Japanese honey bees know how to kill the giant hornets, they leave a gap to encourage the hornet to come into the hive then surround it, this raises the temperature to 47 degrees Celsius which kills the wasp in time.

Anyway back to the story Rie’s parent’s house was under siege but her Mother Setsuko wiped them out with a rolled up magazine. Just goes to show the power of the printed word.

And we learned a valuable lesson, keep on the good side of Rie’s Mother

Dave Riley » wasp

Giant Wasp museum pt2

Attack of the Giant Wasps