Zompist Bboard Again

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 8:28 am In the house we have the weird looking Sceliphron.

We have those too — quite commonly, in fact — but I’ve never seen one inside a house.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 8:28 am Wild bees in France have stings (depending on species), but they're not agressive. Most of these aren't social, so you likely won't have a lot of them.

Thank you! Given that there are usually several flying in and out of the gaps between the planks in a short time, I'm relatively sure that they're a eusocial species.

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 8:30 am

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 8:28 am In the house we have the weird looking Sceliphron.

We have those too — quite commonly, in fact — but I’ve never seen one inside a house.

To be specific, they don't get inside... but they build their nests in the window frames. They're innocuous so I leave them be. (Or used to... I haven't seen any this year)

I've had wasps try and build their nests inside my car (I chase them out, of course) -- this happened two years in a row.
Wasp queens have the annoying habit of hiding inside the house in the winter. Not so pleasant; when you see them, they're cold, sleepy, sluggish but extra agressive.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 8:45 am

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 8:30 am

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 8:28 am In the house we have the weird looking Sceliphron.

We have those too — quite commonly, in fact — but I’ve never seen one inside a house.

To be specific, they don't get inside... but they build their nests in the window frames.

Funny, I haven’t seen them doing that here. (I never thought I’d hear of a creature which was more annoying in Europe than in Australia…)

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 8:50 am Funny, I haven’t seen them doing that here. (I never thought I’d hear of a creature which was more annoying in Europe than in Australia…)

I double-checked, and maybe I got the species wrong. Our funny-looking wasps look more like Delta unguiculatum.

The bugs are plenty annoying here; though (though, unlike Australia , not dangerous). My feelings are indeed contradictory. I'm really happy about the biodiversity and more generally nature and wildlife right next to home; but it's getting really hot and I'm not looking forward to the huge and dumb beetles, moths, bugs (*) that will inevitably get caught in the lights all summer.

(*)not the generic word for insect; I mean the actual bugs -- or Heteroptera How do you native speakers make clear you mean these, idiomatically?

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 9:08 am
The bugs are plenty annoying here; though (though, unlike Australia , not dangerous).

Don't you have black widows?

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 9:08 am

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 8:50 am Funny, I haven’t seen them doing that here. (I never thought I’d hear of a creature which was more annoying in Europe than in Australia…)

I double-checked, and maybe I got the species wrong. Our funny-looking wasps look more like Delta unguiculatum.

Hmm… they do all look more or less the same, don’t they? I think ours is genuinely Sceliphron; we also get the similar-looking Polistes humilis but I think the wasps I see in summer are mostly the former (though we get nests of the latter reasonably often).

(*)not the generic word for insect; I mean the actual bugs -- or Heteroptera How do you native speakers make clear you mean these, idiomatically?

Generally, we don’t. I think they can be called ‘true bugs’ if you’re an entomologist or pedant.

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 9:29 am

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 9:08 am
The bugs are plenty annoying here; though (though, unlike Australia , not dangerous).

Don't you have black widows?

I looked it up, and I swear I'm not making this up, the Australian black widow kills; European black widow venom hurts horribly but isn't lethal.
Anyway, they're extant in France but I never saw any.

And of course wasps and hornets are genuinely dangerous.

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 4:07 am Wild bees are apparently building, or have already built, a nest under the planks on our balcony. If they were wasps, I'd have posted about them in the Venting Thread, but since they're bees, I've got more mixed feelings. I mean, bees are pretty useful for all kinds of things, and they've had various troubles recently, and I think they're even a protected species here.

You should contact an animal protection association, such as NABU or Tierschutzbund. AFAIK, those people can relocate the wild bee nest to somewhere safe.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 10:21 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 4:07 am Wild bees are apparently building, or have already built, a nest under the planks on our balcony. If they were wasps, I'd have posted about them in the Venting Thread, but since they're bees, I've got more mixed feelings. I mean, bees are pretty useful for all kinds of things, and they've had various troubles recently, and I think they're even a protected species here.

You should contact an animal protection association, such as NABU or Tierschutzbund. AFAIK, those people can relocate the wild bee nest to somewhere safe.

Thank you! Not sure if they could get at the nest, though, given that it's under the planks. And not sure if the bees are bothering us that much.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 9:08 am (*)not the generic word for insect; I mean the actual bugs -- or Heteroptera How do you native speakers make clear you mean these, idiomatically?

In my English at least, ‘bug’ can be either a synonym for insect or a wastebasket word¹ for all the insects that don't have more specific names, which mostly overlaps with the Heteroptera²; in the context of the list you used it it, I understood it correctly, but if you'd said ‘beetles, moths and other bugs’, then I'd take it as being equivalent to ‘all insects, especially beetles and moths’.

¹ Analogised from wastebasket taxon etc.
² I think; I don't really know

Lērisama wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 12:45 pm

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 9:08 am (*)not the generic word for insect; I mean the actual bugs -- or Heteroptera How do you native speakers make clear you mean these, idiomatically?

In my English at least, ‘bug’ can be either a synonym for insect or a wastebasket word¹ for all the insects that don't have more specific names, which mostly overlaps with the Heteroptera²; in the context of the list you used it it, I understood it correctly, but if you'd said ‘beetles, moths and other bugs’, then I'd take it as being equivalent to ‘all insects, especially beetles and moths’.

¹ Analogised from wastebasket taxon etc.
² I think; I don't really know

In the English I am familiar with colloquially 'bug' basically means 'non-marine arthropod'. If you need to specify Heteroptera you have to say 'true bug'.

In Wisconsin the bees, and especially the bumblebees (which seem to be the most common kind of be here), are quite gentle, whereas wasps can be quite aggressive and are often attracted by things like food outside. I can stand out in the garden at the house where I live and bees will fly around busy visiting flowers without caring one bit as to my presence.

Ironically, the only kind of Hymenoptera that I have been stung by are bumblebees, which would sometimes get indoors at the house I lived in a kid and then I would proceed to step on them.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 10:14 pm In Wisconsin the bees, and especially the bumblebees (which seem to be the most common kind of be here), are quite gentle, whereas wasps can be quite aggressive and are often attracted by things like food outside. I can stand out in the garden at the house where I live and bees will fly around busy visiting flowers without caring one bit as to my presence.

The bees here are basically the same — both native and introduced. I think we have some aggressive wasp species but I haven’t encountered any.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 10:01 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 9:29 am

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 9:08 am
The bugs are plenty annoying here; though (though, unlike Australia , not dangerous).

Don't you have black widows?

I looked it up, and I swear I'm not making this up, the Australian black widow kills; European black widow venom hurts horribly but isn't lethal.
Anyway, they're extant in France but I never saw any.

I looked up ‘Australian black widow’, and apparently that’s just another name for the redback spider. They are indeed quite dangerous, but I’ve never heard them called a ‘black widow’ before.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 10:14 pm In Wisconsin the bees, and especially the bumblebees (which seem to be the most common kind of be here), are quite gentle, whereas wasps can be quite aggressive and are often attracted by things like food outside. I can stand out in the garden at the house where I live and bees will fly around busy visiting flowers without caring one bit as to my presence.

Same here. I like bumblebees a lot. I'm looking forward to the time, probably a short time from now, when, unless something unexpected happens, the lavender in the landlady's garden downstairs will be in full bloom, lots of bumblebees will swarm it, and I might occasionally go there to watch them.

Folk linguistics note: while, of course, bumblebees are biologically part of the bee clade, over here, most people who aren't biologists probably often don't really see them as bees, but as a different category of animals. The German word for bumblebee ("Hummel") doesn't even contain the German word for bee ("Biene").

And here they are:

Any idea what species they might be? No, they're not wasps - too small and wrong bzz-ing.

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Jun 18, 2025 3:49 amFolk linguistics note: while, of course, bumblebees are biologically part of the bee clade, over here, most people who aren't biologists probably often don't really see them as bees, but as a different category of animals. The German word for bumblebee ("Hummel") doesn't even contain the German word for bee ("Biene").

Really? When I was young, I assumed that bumblebees were just larger than average honeybees.

malloc wrote: ↑Wed Jun 18, 2025 7:06 am
Really? When I was young, I assumed that bumblebees were just larger than average honeybees.

Yes, really. When I was young, I assumed that bumblebees were as different from other bees as wasps are. I didn't know that they're a type of bee. It even took me embarrassingly long to realize that they're eusocial.

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Jun 18, 2025 5:50 am Any idea what species they might be? No, they're not wasps - too small and wrong bzz-ing.

I don't know what species those are, but those are certainly wasps to me.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Jun 18, 2025 10:27 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Jun 18, 2025 5:50 am Any idea what species they might be? No, they're not wasps - too small and wrong bzz-ing.

I don't know what species those are, but those are certainly wasps to me.

To me, they look like wasps, too.