Red Green: How To Kill Bees

I seem to be on a video kick lately (that's better than my bad habit of not posting though!).

I found this clip particularly funny because I work in pest control. This is definitely not the method I would use in this scenario, and I really don't think you should try this at home.



If the problem really is honey bees, I call a beekeeper to come and collect them. Most of the time my clients say "bee" generically and the pest is actually yellowjackets, hornets, paper wasps, etc., in which case I destroy the nest with an insecticide application (any stragglers that survive won't live long without the support of their hive).

Field Capture: Female Wolf Spider

I see lots of interesting stuff in my line of work, pest control. Today was one of those days.

I arrived at a client's house and was promptly informed that there was "a really big spider on the front step." Usually when people say "really big" and "spider" in the same sentence, their varying degrees of arachnophobia increase the actual size of the creature by quite a bit in their mind's eye. I put down my spray wand and went to have a look.

Turned out to be a "pregnant" female wolf spider:


That white sack you see attached to her abdomen is specifically how you can know that this is a female wolf spider - other than such obvious clues, identifying the sex of a spider frequently requires such things as microscopes. Inside of the sack are eggs and/or hatched spiderlings. Once they have undergone their first molt, they'll emerge and climb onto their mother's back where they hitch a ride until they're big enough to fend for themselves.

Now, as to her size, to many folks she really is "really big." To people in many parts of the world, they probably wouldn't even take notice of her. In any case, I put a U.S. quarter dollar next to her to establish scale:


She'll now get to live out her days in a nice terrarium, going along with us (the pest control outfit I work for) to home shows and whatnot.