Let’s get one thing straight right now. I am pro-bee. I planted bee-friendly flowers this year. I buy local honey. I don’t pluck the dandelions in our yard. Some of you will read this and try to frame me as a bee hater. I assure you, I’m not. If you need more proof check our Netflix history: we’ve watched Bee Movie at least a dozen times. But buzzing around among all of those non-threatening pollinators you’ll also find their less noble cousin, the wasp. Wasps can be aggressive and nasty, and being stung by one hurts like a son of a gun.
Peaceful pollinators or vicious wasps — I don’t want either of them buzzing around inside my home. I have a firm policy about nature staying outside. That goes double for anything with wings. The tricky thing is that with bees or wasps the last thing you want to do is start swatting around and provoking it. Thankfully I have a foolproof method for dealing with indoor insects that requires just one household item: hairspray. One quick burst of hairspray and anything with wings is done for. The sticky spray drops them like…well…flies. (The aerosol* kind works best.) I keep a travel-sized Frizz-Ease hairspray at the ready for just such an occasion.
Next level 🐝 slaying hack:
1) Hear an unnerving buzzing sound. Investigate to find a nasty stinging insect has invaded your home. Allow panic to set in.
2) Remember your training. No sudden movements. Head for your bottle of Aquanaut you’ve been holding on to since your punk days.
3) Get within spraying distance and pull that trigger like an eight-year-old boy playing duck hunt. Really let the sucker have it. Show no mercy.
4) Watch your enemy fall. Bask in your triumph, but only for a few seconds. (I’m not sure if hairspray “wears off” but let’s not get cocky.)
5) Smash it with a hammer. Or your shoe, or a rolled up copy of Food Network magazine. The instrument of death isn’t important. The key is you want to make sure there are pieces of exoskeleton everywhere. Ain’t no one coming back from that.
6) Blog about your own genius. Do not mention until the very end that this is an old trick you learned from one of your elementary school teachers when a somehow bee made it into the classroom.
*Aerosol sprays are much more environmentally friendly than they once were and haven’t contained CFCs since the 1970s! Who knew?
