Tag: insects mention

One good way to attract fruit flies into your bathroom, of all places: Bandages with manuka honey in the trash! 😧

I felt like a dumbass, taking that long to figure out what might be drawing them in there. (Seeing some congregating around the trash can kinda helped, a little while ago.) But, it’s really not much honey, and I haven’t even been thinking of it as food in that context. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Guess I’ll try closing that up well in plastic bags, besides making sure it’s emptied more often for a while.

Unusual discoveries: We now have what look like fruit flies hanging out in here…around the bathroom sink? 🤔 And nowhere else that I have seen so far.

I cannot imagine what might be attracting them in there. I even looked around to make sure the cats hadn’t managed to knock anything foodlike behind the sink or something, because you never know with them. Nothing unusual that I could see in there, besides the gnats. They don’t seem to be hanging around anything specific, either, like the drain. Just the general area around the sink.

Guess I’d better try putting together a trap, and hope they are indeed fruit flies willing to take the bait.

Disconcerted again, just realizing that this is the first time in at least a few years that I’ve heard a grasshopper out back. (As in, one lone grasshopper AFAICT.)

It’s been longer than that since I heard any crickets, and I think I’ve only seen two of them here in over 14 years. No exaggeration.

Almost a shame the flying bugs are nowhere near that scarce with no screens, but yeah. Having to wonder how the inner burbs here would react if screaming cicadas suddenly appeared everywhere 😊

mossofthewoodsjewelry:

It’s so funny to see bumblebee behavior, how they basically have to learn what is and is not a flower through example.

For months the bumblebees were totally ignoring my garden, despite an ample supply of delicious Catnip, Lavender, and other assorted goods. Then, I put in the Russian Sage, a tall stalk of ample amounts of purple flowers, that can be seen in my garden from the hillside, and suddenly, a few tentatively showed up to that, then they realized the Hyssop next to it also had nectar, then the Lavender, which they had so quickly snubbed before, then the Borage flowers quickly became their favorite, which last year saw no bee activity at all, etc.

I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re trying to attract bees, consider putting in the botanical equivalent of a runway flag for your garden and see what happens.

A Tip for Book Lovers

humanityinahandbag:

cylinanightshade:

ceridwen-aurora:

sophies-sideshow:

humanityinahandbag:

If you go to libraries and if you shop at Thriftbooks (both of which I recommend) then you may already know this fact. But if you don’t, let me enlighten you;

These places are breeding grounds for BED BUGS.

No this is not me telling you to stop. No this is not me calling that places dirty or gross. This is just the consequence of book sharing. Because these books trade hands and houses in a wonderful and perfect system of intellectual freedom. And I think that’s beautiful. But when a book trades houses that many times it’s prone to pick up something. That something is usually bed bugs.

Due to their natural structuring, books are ideal homes. And once a book returns to the library or the warehouse, these bedbugs wiggle out and find more places to burrow and breed.

And here’s another fun fact. Unlike ants, bed bugs are not social insects. They don’t like each other. So if you think you can just put down a single trap and catch them all, you’re wrong. They don’t work like that. If you poison one, it won’t go home and do a secret handshake with a hundred other of its friends. It’ll just die. If you kill one, you’ve only killed one.

Why am I telling you this? To scare you? To ward you away? Of course not. I’m just here to make sure you’re aware AND to introduce you to something that could save you a shit ton of grief.

The moment you bring the book home or take it out of its packaging, PUT THAT FUCKER INTO THE FREEZER.

NO. THAT’S NOT A JOKE. MOVE THE LEAN CUISINE OUT OF THE WAY AND POP THAT SUCKER INTO THE FREEZER!!!

Extreme cold and extreme heat kills bed bugs. And since we’re not Trump and holding book burnings is generally looked down upon, we do the next best thing. Freeze it. No, it won’t damage the book. A few days in there will only leave it cold and bug free. But if you’re worried, pop it into a large Ziplock before you do.

Read safe and stay bug free, my bookish friends! 📚📚📖

Holy shit that’s good advice

Take it from a survivor…. Bed bugs are a world of grief you want no part of.

If you want to be absolutely sure, you can even bake them in a low temp oven first before freezing them. (This can mess up the binding of some books though. The glue starts to melt.)

Also, from someone who spent HOURS AND HOURS covering each book with PLASTIC, this method will literally make any librarian HATE YOU. We spend hours covering each book. The plastic is very very thin and even a long time in the sun can fuck it up. It crinkles and unsticks and melts easily. And replacing it is near impossible. You’ll fuse the two together and make the job really difficult for us. If you find a bed bug, freeze the book, and then TELL THE LIBRARY RIGHT AWAY. WE HAVE THINGS. AND IF WE DOING, WE CAN CALL THE RIGHT PEOPLE!!! It’s easier to shut down a building and spray some shit than it is to replace all the books people might throw into their oven. Plus, it’s a fire hazard. And that glue, when heated, can be TOXIC. Don’t put your personal health at risk. And don’t make libraries hate you. Don’t. Please. From a former library worker who still has muscle memories of covering books.

DON’T.

Fun Facts About Honey

brunhiddensmusings:

thewannabeee:

some-kind-of-bad-pun:

thewannabeee:

– Honey is mostly sugar (WoW!) it is 80% sugar and 20% water (double WoW!)

– There are over 20,000 species of bees, but only 4 make HONEY

-Honey is the ONLY food that contains all the substances you need to survive (Including WATER)

-Children under the age of 1 should not eat honey… why? because sometimes it contains bad stuff called botulism and can cause them to get botulism poisoning (that sucks, even infants should taste the deliciousness that is honey)

-Honey will crystallize under optimum temperatures (this has a lot to do with how you store it)

-Bees produce honey to eat during the winter when there are no flowers and no nectar for them.

-A honeybee would only need an ounce of honey to be able to fuel a flight around the world (this makes for a very cultural bee!)

-A typical beehive can make up to 400 pounds of honey a year! (Wowza!)

This reads like it was written by a bee and I’m 100% here for it

This is singlehandedly THE BEST compliment I have ever received 🙂

i support bee author