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The first stike happend as I went through my gate. It felt like hot fragments striking my leg in several spots. I didn’t see anything and was thinking ‘fireants - we don’t have any around here?’ as I ran towards the front door and yelled for my wife to open it. When all was said and done I got stung 8 times and had no idea where the enemy was.
The second action came later that day as I set out for a recon mission to determine their base. Under the cover of expired smoke candle smoke that hardly worked I was able to see their hive attached to the fence and gate hinge - a big one about 1/2 the size of a football.
The counterstrike came 2 days later with a can of hornet killer. I got w/i 20 feet and sprayed. The stream did wet the top of the hive and the area but later it looked like the counterstrike was ineffective.
So I went back and bought the more expensive hornet killer and see that I have to spray the bottom of the hive which is much more difficult (I have to get a lot closer.)
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How do I spray the bottom of the hornet hive 2.5 ft off the ground with the hornet killer spray without being sung?
At that time they are dormant (and they are all in the nest). If you direct a stream right into the opening, any critter that comes staggering out will be saturated with pyrethrins and be unable to get to you.
Ok did a night action (dusk actually) and seemed to get them right up their hole. They managed to get one airborne that buzzed me but didn’t sting. I don’t know if their all dead but i did some serious damage.
Check your yellow pages. There are people that will come and get rid of these for you FOR FREE. You just give them your address and tell them the location of it and they’ll come some night (or dusk) and get rid of it safely and professionaly. They do this for free because they can take the bee’s back to a lab to extract the venom for medical purposes.
Not so, according to this site (whose author is unnamed):
http://allsands.com/Science/hornetinsect_abb_gn.htm
"Like almost all other nest building insects, hornets work to defend their colony. Rapid movement around a colony is considered a threat by the hornet population and could result in a sting. Outside the nest however, hornets almost never attack groundlessly. In fact, scientists have concluded that hornets are amazingly peaceful and remarkably shy, preferring to keep a distance from humans. Unlike the common bee, the hornet most often uses its stinger to kill insects, not people.
"The hornet survives on a variety of insects. Once captured, hornets will often dismember insects, removing the head, legs, wings and abdomen of the prey. It is only the thorax that they transport back to the nest and feed to growing larvae and other workers.
“Workers most often consume flies, spiders and other wasps. Many workers fly at night, catching nocturnal insects and returning them to the nest.”
Are you sure you’re dealing with hornets? Perhaps yellowjackets instead?
P.S. Dave, why the devil are you using cheap-o bug killer of a huge hive of hornets?
It looks like the hive is dead. I see no buzzing around it and can approach pretty close (had to mow the lawn). The can did say wait till night.
As for why was I using the cheapo bug spray, well I have several reasons:
1 - it’s cheaper
2 - the active ingreadent was the same
3 - hI oPaL
4 - the el cheapo brand claimed a spraying distance of 22 ft as opposed to 20ft
5 - It was a name brand (Raid I think) not Billy Bob’s no frills brand of paint stripper/ bee killer
6 - because I never did this before I used it as a test spray - and why waste the $ on the test.
and since I applied it incorrectly at 1st (didn’t get into the hole, just wetted the hive) it was good to waste the cheaper stuff.
Would it be pushing my luck if I were to take the hive down by hand and break it open - I’d love to see what was going on in there (where’s nano-robots when you need them).
If I were you, I’d call someone to have it disposed of. I would not suggest you take the route I once took at the tender age of 4, i.e. throwing a brick at the sucker. Good luck, and for God’s sake, if you go out there again, wear some camouflage or something!
I tried destroying a wasp(yellowjacket nest in my garden a couple of years back; I sprayed the nest with foaming insecticide and it looked as if they were all dead, two days later I thought I’d remove the remains, so I tried to pick it up with a garden fork; it broke open and to my surprise, hundreds of wasps swarmed out and stung me half to death (literally).
The insecticide doesn’t always reach the wasps that are pupating as they are sealed in their cells, these can emerge (not instantaneously, of course, but over the course of a day or two) and cause you trouble, even if the queen has been killed.
mkmiller you have paper wasps. If the nest is small enough (ie 1 or 2 individuals) you can power wash it away. I had one on my balcony and had the power washers take care of it. You might not want to go to the trouble, paper wasps are not aggressive. Even if you screw with them they tend to leave you alone. In fact I felt fine with my wasps going outside for a while, just so happens when my balcony got routinely power washed they went bye-bye.
Perhaps, if the nest is free-hanging enough for this to be feasible–and you’re sure that approaching is safe–you could cautiously creep up with a large bucket of water and lift it around the nest til it is submerged. Wait 5-10 minutes and it would seem likely that anything in there would be dead.
Maybe. Or perhaps this is a really bad idea. Certainly I’d only consider it if the nest really appears dead already!
My friend had a rather large hive in a tree near his back door. He tried some spray, but it didn’t work. He went out at night and nailed it with a hose, they had it rebuilt a few days later.
Fed up, he taped an M-80 on the end of a long bamboo pole, lit it and crammed it into the middle of the nest.
OK, I was looking at the hive thinking it was dead. I decided to throw a rock at it to see if anything happened. The rock struck the fence (which the hive was on) and shortly after that many bees came crawling out and a few flyers.
Was these the reserves or recently hatched? Were they thinking to abandond the hive when I struck the fence or is this what happened when they attacked me at 1st - they started to crawl out then all flew at me?
more importantly how can I get rid of them.
I like the idea of low yeild explosives but don’t know where I can get an M-80. I don’t want to deal with incinderories as there is a pile of leaves close by nad I don’t want to start a brush fire and have to fight it w/ a mad bunch of bees around. I considered the hose but too afraid they would be able to get me. I could connect the hose to hot water and crank up the hot water heater to 190F. ’
Also I was thinking of shooting some holes in the hive w/ a BB gun from a safe distance then try spraying into the holes later.
ALso I think I might be able to drive my car right up to the hive and crush it w/ my bumper but I don’t know if the bees can get inside the car and they would certainly come out the bottom underneith the car.
k2dave, I think you have them confused. Hornets are wasps, not bees. For bees, look in your
phone book for a bee-ologist to come & take them. Thats what the cops told me once.
Hi k2dave,
Here’s how we do it where i come from. First, you need a jar that is big enough. The water is not a very good idea because you’ll get them very pissed! Wait at night, take the empty jar and slide it up when the nest is in take some flat cover that you’ll slide on the top of your jar so that you’ll cut the net loose it’ll fall in the jar. The wasp will get pissed off and fly out of the nest but now their in the jar. You close the jar and eventually they’ll all die.
I’ve done this one time, the nest was attach to a porch on a flat surface so when the jar was in place no wasp could escape. I would be very careful with this. You dont want the jar to break!
If you’re really angry about them, use a good 'ol WD40 spray can with a lighter. Cheap flamethrower are always good for those job. They’ll leave for sure but you need to run very fast for cover
