# Wasp spray is flammable



## 1oldphart (Aug 20, 2014)

Restoring an 841 ford and taking off the hood and grill surround, I put my hand with 3/8 impact into the nose and wasps start boiling out after stinging the hell out of me. These aren't normal wasps but ISIS muslim wasps. I go to the house and wife gives me sympathy (not much) and wasp spray(big can). As an ex combat engineer I doosh those miscreants and stomp their wriggling carcasses. Then go back to work. Bout 15 min later Ive got to torch off a bolt. This is when I find out wasp spray is flammable. got the fire out without too much damage, and I guess some guys PAY for manscaping hair removal, but in other places. Oh well all is good....paul


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## Thorim (Jan 19, 2015)

One of my memories of basic training is of a young member of the Texas national guard who would run around the barracks with a can of Lysol and bic lighter using it as blow torch and threatening several members of his training platoon all the while shouting he was a card carrying member of the kkk and proud of it....... he didn't make it past the first week of boot camp, I guess some don't learn how to play well with others lol


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## Thorim (Jan 19, 2015)

1oldphart said:


> Restoring an 841 ford and taking off the hood and grill surround, I put my hand with 3/8 impact into the nose and wasps start boiling out after stinging the hell out of me. These aren't normal wasps but ISIS muslim wasps. I go to the house and wife gives me sympathy (not much) and wasp spray(big can). As an ex combat engineer I doosh those miscreants and stomp their wriggling carcasses. Then go back to work. Bout 15 min later Ive got to torch off a bolt. This is when I find out wasp spray is flammable. got the fire out without too much damage, and I guess some guys PAY for manscaping hair removal, but in other places. Oh well all is good....paul


 Glad you survived the encounter with both wasps and wasp killing spray


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## Thorim (Jan 19, 2015)

Ahhh combat engineers I had the joy of being a Military Policeman, one day the M.P. desk got a call from the Company Commandeer of the Combat Engineer Unit saying he had caught a young soldier who was about to echo tango suitcase (for civilian ETS=ended tour of service he was getting out of the Army) who decided to put a knot in his boot laces and toss them over a power line, happened that particular line had four thousand kilo-volts of electricity running through it. I was dispatched to handle the situation...Upon research conducted by myself and the dispatcher it was learned that technically the young man was still in the Army so his about to be former Company Commander made the young soldier get a friend and a front end loader to remove offending combat boots from said line soon to be ex soldier grab one boot and pulled the other across the line while standing inside a metal bucket at its maximum height, when eyelets of a fore mentioned boots came in contact with energized line said soon to be ex Army member was knocked out of bucket receiving burns to his hand holding boot, bottom of feet where electricity exited his body and a broken arm from fall..... Combat Engineer Company Commandeer was promptly charged with reckless endangerment of a military person and court marshaled, soldier received treatment for broken arm as was held for three additional day for observation because of electric burns... went home in one piece........ a true story lol


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## Thorim (Jan 19, 2015)

Sorry for being off top and hijacking thread


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## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

Thorim said:


> Sorry for being off top and hijacking thread


No worries. Got me thinking of my Dad as I wind down here with rest of family. As I hear the soun ds s of nature here, I am reminded of the birds and frogs who spoke to him many years ago.

Re up. Flock you!


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## Coondle (Aug 28, 2013)

Many aerosol sprays are hydrocarbon based and therefore flammable.

Airborne wasps warrant use of a spray.

If wasp or bee nests are discovered and you are not under threat, another material which is very toxic to bees and wasps is petrol or as you in the US call it gas. Concentrated fumes of petrol are sufficient to literally dissolve bees and wasps. Bees and wasps are not very active at night, so a cup of petrol into a nest at night will drop the problem insects like they are poleaxed. They virtually dissolve instantly into an unrecognisable blob.

Papernest wasps build a nest suspended from a single attachment and of the consistency of paper, hence the name, and looking like an upside down mushroom/umbrella. About 1100 species worldwide with 300 in North America. Discovered several nests in a shed. Half a cup of gas thrown over each nest at night killed all of them and their offspring in the nest instantly.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Sorry to hear of your incident... Yep, like most aerosol products, wasp spray is flammable... virtually all spray can stuff (paint, air freshener, you name it) uses propane as a propellant and is, therefore, flammable. Many also use various "petroleum distillates" as solvents for whatever it is they're carrying, especially stuff like wasp spray, spray paint, and various types of spray-on lube, penetrating oil, WD-40, etc. Spray them on anything hot enough, it can burst into flame like a blowtorch. Of course the wet products remaining behind after spraying are flammable until they've fully evaporated to the point of being dry (and some are STILL flammable due to leaving behind flammable residues!)

When I was farming cotton, we had to fish the pickers out of the barn in mid-July every year, in order to check it out and get 'em greased and ready for picking, make any needed repairs, etc. Now, these old cotton pickers had about a MILLION nice, inviting places for yellow jackets (paper wasps down here, a little different than the ground-living yellow jackets up north, but with the same disposition) to build their nests. By mid-July, some of these nests had reached truly staggering proportions... some would be as large or even larger than a football, and have THOUSANDS of diligent, armed wasps living on its surface. Needless to say, when it came time to get the pickers out of the barn, one approached the machines as carefully as a soldier in wartime approaching booby-trapped equipment! We had to prime the fuel pumps on the old gasoline engines, refill the carbuerators with fresh gas, and usually install a fresh battery (we frequently pulled the batteries out and used them in other machinery during other parts of the year). This effort was complicated by the fact that the engines were in back, between a pair of 6 inch steel pipe frame rails, covered with a steel "doghouse" to keep stray cotton lint from the basket above from getting down into the engine area and catching fire, and there were two pairs of counterbalance springs and their associated linkages and hydraulic cylinders and equipment to make it all work mounted just above the frame rails flanking the engine and transmission. The doghouse itself was usually home to a wasp nest, as was the bolster for the single rear steer tire under the engine, and the expanded metal basket floor that held the cotton above the engine was a veritable "wasp condo"...

In the old days, when I was a young guy, we frequently used the regular LEADED gasoline to kill the wasps... a cupful thrown at a nest, or some quickly applied and carefully targeted squirts from a squirt can filled with gasoline, and a few stragglers would lift off from the periphery, but the rest would largely be killed in place or simply drop straight to the ground in their death throes. The nest could then safely be whacked down off the machine with a stick or wrench. However, with the phase-out of LEADED gasoline in the late 70's and early 80's, and the eventual extinction of being able to get leaded gasoline for those old machines AT ALL (we could get leaded farm gas (tax free) through the late 80's IIRC, because that's what we ran in those machines), with the switch to the much more "environmentally benign" UNLEADED gasoline, and then shortly thereafter to the typical high-corn alcohol content "oxygenated" gasoline of today-- well, it didn't take long to figure out THAT wouldn't work anymore!

Last time I tried to kill paper wasps with this modern CRAP called gasoline, I think it'd been just about as effective to spray them with ice water or warm p!ss... IOW, they just got PO'd and chased us out of the barn! I found the solution to that, however... some wasp sprays were good and some weren't, but BY FAR the best I ever used was "Bengal" brand wasp and hornet killer... that stuff would knock them out even if you slightly missed the nest! Plus it'd shoot up to about 15-20 feet, so you didn't have to get up close and run like h3ll after spraying them! That's the only stuff I'd use...

We got stung up plenty, lemme tell ya, because after we got the pickers out and greased, we'd have to pull cotton trailers out of the pasture, air up tires, fix loose wire or broken sideboards, etc... half the time we were stuck airing up wagon tires in waist high grass, and the undersides of those cotton trailers made some very attractive homes for wasps and yellow jackets... just kicking a tire one time at the bottom to see if it was still holding air and settled into the dirt over the winter, or if the tire was flat, earned me several stings to the face, neck, temple, and hands...

One time we'd pulled some trailers out of the pasture and down the turning row, and my younger brother and I were out there checking them out. I noticed one trailer had some loose wire inside, and I had to go in and push it back into place and he and I would tie the wire back to the sides like it was supposed to be... I started climbing the 2x4 ladder attached to the front sideboard of the trailer, and when I got almost to the top I looked up to reach for the next rung... I found myself staring into a football-size yellow jacket nest, with a thousand little beady compound eyes staring back at me, little yellow antennae nervously flicking back and forth on top of their ugly little heads, pointed wings poised for the liftoff and attack... I just instantly let go of the trailer entry ladder and kicked off backwards, sailing through the air like a cat dropped off a barn roof, twisted in mid-air and managed to land on my hapless brother who was about to follow me up the ladder and over the top into the trailer, knocking him and me both flat on the ground... Now, if ya knew me, you'd know how funny that was... I was about 200 lbs and 6-1 at the time, so this catlike response must have been pretty funny to anyone who might have been watching... and my brother was about the same size and still in high school at the time... maybe a little lighter... At any rate, after landing on him and sending us both in a heap on the ground, after the ensuing cussing and discussing, I pointed at the football size nest of yellow jackets... my brother's eyes bulged, he swallowed hard, and said, "you did the right thing!" End of rant... LOL Some well placed Bengal eradicated the pests and allowed us to finish our work...

Later! OL JR


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