Kitchen Garden Forum

Woke up abruptly at 3am Thursday,felt as though a woodlouse was taking a constitutional across my posterior.
Sleepily tried to brush it off and it bit me twice!
Very wide-awakily tried brushing it off, to be bitten twice again!
Tried removing my left buttock with left hand, success, intruder-wise.

By now wide awake I put the light on and started to search for what the devil had got at me, decided in the process that it was not bites, but stings.

Found a 1/2cm to 1/4 inch sized insect like a shrunken dark wasp crawling across the carpet towards the bed, dispatched it clinically with a pen knife blade to try and preserve the evidence. The other description that would fit is like an ant queen with a coloured band on the stinging end.

Here are the best photo's I could manage.

When everyone has had a good laugh at my experience please could they then try to identify my arse stinging nocturnal visitor?

If there is a nest of them I want to visit them before they visit me!

Looks a bit like a mining bee, not sure which one though

Peter, I should stick a hot cup of tea on your bum just in case.

I have never seen anything like that bug before!

Dear Peter,
it can't be a bee as bees can only sting once and the sting is left in the wound and the bee dies. Just thought you neded to know that.
Regards Sally Wright.

Sally, thanks, my Dad was a beekeeper.

Never ever use tweezers to remove a bee-sting from yourself, you will just copress the poison sac on top of the sting. Scrape the sting out of your skin with your thumbnail or the edge of a nailfile.

However that statement is not strictly true.
As a small boy I brushed a bee off my forearm as it started to sting me and did so twice before it managed to lodge the barb on the sting in my skin, thus dis-emboweling itself.

Peter,
I feel for you ! I've got absolutely NO idea either, but I have got a rather good insect book and a Trouser bloke who's pretty good at identifying bugs from it. If he comes up with anything from the photo you posted up, I'll ask him if he could let you know.
I hope you heal well pretty soon.......... ooh! poor bunny...

I've just had a look in my Girls Own Book of Nasties and the only thing I can find with that reddish stripe on it's bum (sorry!) is a solitary wasp called Cryptocheilus affinis which provisions it's solitary nest with insects or spiders for it's hatching young by paralysing it's prey with a sting....this one obviously had very grand ideas for it's larder!

How about a Ruby-tailed wasp (chrysis ignita)?

My book says "small but attractive insect with green shiny head and thorax and ruby-red abdomen. Flies June-August. Female searches diligently on walls and banks for mason wasp nest which she enters to parasitise the larvae"

No mention of diligently searching Peter's bottom then?

I wondered if anyone else was thinking what i was thinking.
At least it wasn't on Peters front, it could have caused an embarrassing swelling.

Kind regards Old Herbaceous.

Theres no fool like an old fool.

Carole B. wrote:I've just had a look in my Girls Own Book of Nasties and the only thing I can find with that reddish stripe on it's bum (sorry!) is a solitary wasp called Cryptocheilus affinis which provisions it's solitary nest with insects or spiders for it's hatching young by paralysing it's prey with a sting....this one obviously had very grand ideas for it's larder!

Carole, you must have seen me last year when I visited your pleasant isle. At over 19 stone I do agree it was an ambitious provisioneer. Looks like you may have identified my nocturnal assassin.

Chantal, I'll sort you out later.

OH, what do you mean embarassing?

I have no idea what it is. However, I'm so glad that it wasn't in my bed. If it were, I would have had to reconstruct the bedroom, strip the bed, search under and over, look in all the nooks and crannies, sprayed the insectiside everywhere. Even then Mary would have probably, no definitely, sleped in the spare room!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ooh Peter, I'm scared

Well Peter i would have found it embarrassing, but i have led a sheltered life.

Kind regards Old Herbaceous.

Theres no fool like an old fool.