Well, it looks like there is something to discuss; you’re comparing apples with oranges; combustible dust finely dispersed in a cloud and exposed to potential sources of ignition is an explosion hazard - I’m not disagreeing with that at all, what I am questioning is whether flour being sucked up and collected together into the confined space of a vacuum cleaner bag is all that comparable - I don’t think it is.
Does anyone know if there have ever been any cases of vacuum cleaner dust ignition explosions?
When I was a kid, my dad killed a ton of wasps one Sunday using a torch (propane, not an English flashlight). There was a big stone wall that had wasps/hornets/whatever nesting inside. The little bastards stung every kid on the block at one point or another that summer.
So my dad (a plumber) brought a big tank of propane and assorted fittings and hoses home. He got up before sunrise and set the torch up with visegrips as a holder and started the flame.
A small crowd eventually sat and watched as my dad adjusted things so that the wasps perished as they flew through the flame. I remember the PILE of charred remains. Very cool.
I’ve generally needed a baseball bat or a gun for the WASPs around my house, as they’re so large. I don’t think you could even suck up one of their babies…
From a story one of my friends told about her husband’s horrifying experience (from his POV) a hand held dust-buster would work just fine. A friend of his had a bee problem, and her husband always wanted to keep bees, so the two of them had a great idea - they’d use a dust-buster to vaccum the bees up, and he’d take them home. (what he thought he was going to do without a queen, I don’t know).
The plan worked great- for about 5 seconds. Sure, it vaccumed the bees in, at which point they were sucked so hard against the back of the dust buster that they were crushed. Every single bee. Her husband’s friend was pleased, but her husband was upset. They hadn’t taken the bees fragility into question before deciding on their course of action. Wasps are of a similar body structure so with a hard pastic vaccum and a powerful enough motor you too could have insect puree.
I don’t know if they do wasps, but entomologists use specialized vacuum gadgets to collect flying insects. A friend of my sister sometimes hunts mosquitos along the roadside, and gets very strange looks from drivers going by as he’s shooting his 1920s-style death ray into the air.
And if I don’t? What are you going to do? Release the vacuums? Or the wasps? Or the vacuums with wasps inside of them and when you reverse the slow wasps fly out of their hoses?