"I've never been stung."

"Are you allergic to bee stings?" Ian Dickie, local fungal expert and key collaborator on my work in New Zealand asked.

"I've never been stung, actually," I replied.

Ian swore.  Not an unusual occurrence, but a particularly vehement example.  "Well, let's make sure we grab a wasp kit, then."

Wasp kits here are lightweight packs of antihistamine cream, a couple bandages, an inhaler, and vials of adrenaline.  No epinephrine pens for us: if you go into anaphylaxis in the field, someone will be snapping open a glass ampule and shooting you up with a syringe they filled themselves.

I like to think that, if I were in such dire straits, I wouldn't care.

So far, so good.  I'm more than halfway through my stay in New Zealand, and through much of the most treacherous part (from a wasp perspective), and no one in my field team has yet been stung.  We're quite proud of the fact, but we knock on wood every day.

Looking up at the Mountain Beech canopy.  We mostly don't do this, since
it's easier to avoid stepping into wasp nests (dug into the ground) when you're
actually looking down at where your feet are going.

Invasive wasps are quite a problem here in New Zealand.  They tend to infest the lower-elevation native beech forests, feeding on a sooty mold that grows on the trunks of the trees.  (The mold, in turn, is fed by the excretions of scale insects, which burrow into the beech bark to suck on the trees' sugary sap.)  Because their diet is rich in carbohydrates, the wasps crave protein.  They attack insects, harrass native birds, and defend their nests with a vengeance.  I've been in plenty of forests where the only sound is the menacing hum of millions of wasps going about their hungry business.

A rather poor (sorry) photo of some sooty mold on the
surface of a mountain beech trunk.

Lucky for us, the wasps are colonial ground-nesters.  Luckier for us, they're most agressive in February and March, when they've been active for a couple months of summer and the protein deficiency is really hitting them.

It's a great time to go digging for Douglas-fir seedlings in the forest.  (You can tell I've inherited my Dad's sense of sarcasm.)

So we move slowly and cautiously, keeping hold of all our belongings in case we step into a nest and have to make a dash for it.  We try to sample at higher elevations, where the scale insects, sooty mold, and therefore wasps, are absent.  And we take along our experts, like K., who have been around plenty of wasp infestations and know the signs.  When she gets nervous, I pick a different location.

Just in case, I'll keep schlepping that wasp kit.