Between a Rock and a Hard Place

I am accustomed to sharing the towers with wasps early in the fall. Their job is done and most are doing little more than waiting to die. For some reason they are attracted to the cool steel of the towers. They are not a danger since they have no hive to protect. Leave them alone and they leave you alone, even when you're nose to nose with them. Above 10 meters their numbers rapidly diminish.

July is not that time of year. Wasps are now very active and several species are easy to antagonize if you do nothing worse than walk beneath their hives in the tree branches overhead. The occasional sting is painful but usually nothing to worry about. Then one day about 25 years ago, while mowing the lawn, a few stings from wasps protecting a nearly invisible hive 5 meters overhead sent me to emergency room. 

Doctors informed me afterward that I had developed an allergy to wasp venom. I learned that isn't unusual. The risk increases after repeated assaults because the immune system learns the wrong lesson and eventually reacts inappropriately, with a risk of anaphylactic shock. I was fortunate not to become a statistic.

There is immunotherapy available for a variety of allergens. I never got it for wasp and bee venom since it can be unpleasant. Instead I carried an Epi-pen. Years later I had successful immunotherapy for an unrelated allergen that gifted me with a side benefit in that it also reduced, possibly eliminated, my sensitivity to wasp venom. The immune system pathways are largely identical, with small differences for each allergen. 

I was surprised by this in the following year when wasp stings only elicited what can be called a normal response: pain and swelling for a couple of days. However the risk remains and living in a sparsely populated rural area there are daily encounters with wildlife in all of its variety. I am not fearful of the wildlife, even wasps, but it helps to be observant and not take due care. Several days ago I was not observant and I paid the price.

As mentioned in the previous article, I have a lot of outstanding maintenance and new construction to catch up on. One of those tasks is to diagnose and repair an intermittent in the coax going to the upper 5-element yagi of the 20 meter stack. It was a fine warm morning so I gathered my tools and gear and headed over to the 140' tower sitting amidst the growing hay. I mow narrow paths to the big tower and around the bases to ease access during late spring and early summer.

I did my usual rapid visual inspection of the tower and antennas and started up. I didn't get far. I should have taken the warning of an unusually dense cloud of flying insects at the tower base. 

During the several weeks since my last climb up this tower the wasps had built a large and growing nest about 15' above ground. It wasn't visible during my brief inspection of the tower because it was inside one of the wide girts on the climbing face of the tower. It would have been difficult to spot regardless since it's gray and shadowed by the girt in the bright sunshhine.

The density of rapidly flying insects increased until my hands unknowingly almost directly contacted the hidden hive. That's when they attacked.

Which brings me to the title of this article. On the one hand, I'm allergic to wasp venom and the stings were adding up fast. On the other hand, I'm on a tower where the only immediate escape is to jump. I'll leave you to choose which of those options is the rock and which is the hard place.

What would you do? There really is only one correct answer: climb down. Whenever you get into a tight situation there is the risk of panic and the classic fight or flight response. But you can't fight the wasps nor can you fly (literally or otherwise). Besides, if you do jump, the wasps will follow and you will suffer from both the fall and the stings. So start descending and endure the attack as well as you can. It'll feel like forever even though it may only be seconds. Luckily the local wasps don't build their hives very high.

I started running when I hit the ground, burdened as I was with my climbing gear, tools and heavy boots. Many of the wasps pursued and continued stinging me. They let off when I was about 200' (60 m) from the tower. The immediate threat had abated but it wasn't over. From experience I knew that it could be 10 minutes or more until the severity of the venom reaction could be assessed.

I won't bore you with the excruciating details. One picture of my hand will suffice. My face and arms looked about the same. It was a warm day so I was only wearing a tee shirt and a small cap to protect my head and eyes from the sunshine. There were few stings below my chest. The greatest worry was having to breathe through my mouth for an hour because the swelling completely blocked the air passages in my nose.

I recovered remarkably well.  When I attended a social gathering two days later, the swelling had diminished enough that few remarked on my appearance. But it did give me a story to tell!

In the end, the wasps fared worse than I did. Although difficult to reach, I went out at night when the wasps huddled inside the hive and drenched them with a high pressure insecticide canister. I always keep a couple of them in the house. 

When the survivors returned the next day, I made a 20' pole out of antenna tubing and wrecked the hive. That drove them off for good. It is to be expected that I may be slightly nervous when I resume tower work after I've fully healed.

Perhaps you found this story amusing, frightening or instructive, or a little of all three. It can happen to any ham doing tower and antenna work. In warmer climates the danger can be worse. What an unpleasant surprise it would be when wasps swarm from a hive hiding behind a rotator 50' up the tower!

What lessons can we learn from this experience? That assumes that I haven't frightened you so much that you've taken a vow to never climb a tower again!

• Know the risks: Mid-summer is prime time for insects building nests. While there isn't much shelter on a tower, competition among the critters for the best spots can lead some to choose your tower.
  
• Inspect: Inspect the tower, from all sides. That probably wouldn't have helped me in this case because the hive was well shaded. But I should have paid closer attention to the insect activity at the tower base. The danger signs were there. I typically only inspect for structural anomalies before each climb.
• Don't panic: Jumping will leave you disabled on the ground and at the mercy of the merciless wasps. Panic almost always leads to poor choices. As difficult as it may be in the moment, think clearly and act appropriately. Mitigate the attack if possible and then get out of there, but safely. The attack may continue but you will survive. 
• Get help: Seek out family or neighbours immediately if you are working alone, or whoever happens to be nearby. Get medical help in case the worst happens.
• Prevention: Build your towers and antennas away from trees and foliage. It is safer for the tower and for you. This year I worked on a repeater tower where the site owner allowed adjacent trees to grow to a large size. I had to climb through the branches. Insects blend into their surroundings and when the leaves are in bloom it is likely you'll spot the hive too late.
  

There are towers that are less likely to host hives. The wide C-channel girts on the LR20 towers that are used by many large Canadian ham stations provide more shelter than I'd have guessed. Thin tubular legs and struts like those on Rohn towers commonly used in the US provide little protective cover for hives. The underside of rotator and bearing plates on all makes of tower often host hives but you'll see them in time, if you're paying attention.

My hand grip is not yet back to full strength so I haven't resumed tower work. Another couple of days should so it, and in any case we're about to be drenched by the remnants of hurricane Beryl. Better to fall behind schedule than to take unnecessary risks.