the colour of the nest will be dependent to a large extent on the materials available for construction; wasp nests in urban areas tend to be pasty greyish beige in colour (because of the widespread use of softwoods in gardens), whereas in more countrified areas (at least here in the UK) they are often darker and more mottled, as the wasps will be using rotten hardwoods from old tree stumps etc.
The picture above doesn’t really do the exterior of a wasp nest justice either; it’s usually kind of ‘swirly’ in appearance, like this
GAAAH!!! Thirty-Five Millimeters!! I just curled up into the fetal position.
[hijack] When I was about six years old, my Grandfather had me going into his window wells in his house in So. Illinois to clean them out. I got a Matchbox car, or something. Anyway, I jumped down into one, directly into a large Yellow Jacket nest, and was stung several dozen times. I jumped out of there, rolled around on the ground, and they still were coming after me and stinging me. I can still remember looking down at my knee as one of them came into focus and stung me. It looked about two feet long. I have a sneaking suspicion that led to my now mortal fear of stinging insects. (Oh yes - and I was told that every one that stung me died, only to discover years later that was bullshit. Grrr!!!) [/hijack]
Sounds like k2dave has already eradicated his tormenters, so I don’t need to share my grandfather’s clever application of kerosene and a shotgun.
Also, I can identify, Dooku. When I was maybe three years old, I locked myself in a small cabana at somebody’s beach house. The slam of the door disturbed the wasp nest above the frame against the ceiling. Y’know those casino game booths where you try to catch the money swirling around you? Imagine that with angry stinging insects. I react badly to nearby buzzing to this very day.
Oh, and galt’s refrigerator-box suggestion is the funniest goddamn thing I’ve read all month.
Tell me about it. They are damn near indestructible too.
One of these lovable, peaceful, benign creatures came inside one of the kids’ bedrooms last year and flew repeatedly at my wife’s face (I’m sure, since they are not agressive, it probably just wanted to say ‘hi’ or something), anyway, my wife conpletely misunderstood it’s friendly intentions and whacked it with her two-inch-thick mail order catalogue, after beating it severely a dozen times against the floor with said volume, the insect was partly stunned and could be captured.
That is too funny. And I mean that in the “we can laugh about it now” way, not the [Nelson] “ha, hah!” [/Nelson] way.
My other funny sting story - I was driving with my arm out the window, and I guess I drove straight into the back of a bee flying along, b/c I got stung, then immediately and with full force flung my hand up and smashed it on the top of the door, then slammed on the brakes. Unfortunately, two of my brothers were in the car with me, which has of course immortalized the incident. I had a nice tiny bee sting surrounded by a huge black bruise on the top of my hand. :smack:
I can’t even attempt to kill them for fear I will fail and get attacked. On the extremely rare occasion that I get the balls to try and swat one, I turn into Mel Gibson in that scene from The Patriot, beating it into a dusty pulp.
Believe it or not, I had never thought about that before. That makes my day.
I also got stung once while having my arm out the car window. I wasn’t driving at the time thought and didn’t slam my arm into the car either - but it hurt no the less.
The very best (and safest) way to get rid of a hornet/wasp nest is to wait until winter when the nest is frozen solid, knock it down, smash it, pour gas on it and set it afire. Works every time.
mkmiller99,
If it looks like mud, it may be mud and home to Mud Daubers.
Here is a picture of a Mud Dauber nest from theIowa State University entymology site.
When i was a kid, my brothers, cousins and i killed a lot of wasps, bees, hornets, etc. It’s not that we went looking for them, but when one of us got stung, we layed off pounding on each other and and descended en masse on them stinging bit-gizzies like a plague o’ locusts. Our weapon of choice was gasoline. While it was not always possible to lay hands on a can of Bee Bopper® (honest to gawd, a real product and not a bad username), gasoline was plentiful on the farm. We’d fill spray bottles, set the nozzle to stream and douche them out, but good! Once the nest was soaked, we’d knock it down, kick it in the clear and light it up. Very satisfying in a death and destruction, pyromaniacal kind a way. But you do have to hit them hard, fast and continuous. As erislover mentioned, the gasoline method works even better for the ground based assualt as you get to employ the ‘napalm blanket’ directive (with the added benefit that you don’t have to finish mowing the lawn).
It is amazing how well gasoline works. With the exposed “regular” paper wasp or red wasp nests that I see most often, you can take a coffee mug of gasoline and spash a nest covered in dozens of wasps and of them will fall dead to the ground, on contact.
