Well, we live on the edge of a forest, so this kind of thing is fairly common. Plus, my house is like 110+ years old, wood-sided farmhouse. This is a very attractive place for those little bastids to set up housekeeping.
Anyhoo, the saga began when Kid Kalhoun started complaining that there were bees dying in his room. Attentive mother that I was, I yelled up the stairs and told him to “Close the damn window and you wouldn’t have these problems!” After a couple more complaints, I went up there and, sure enough, he had half a dozen dead bees on his bed. Yikes, and everything, but I didn’t make a connection with A Bigger Problem.
The next clue was when he announced he was no longer going to take the garbage down to the road because there were a gajillion bees he had to maneuver past. And he was right! So we realized there was a problem. We could see them flying around the outside of one area of the house. Called an exterminator. He sprinkled some dry powder around the area which only pissed the little bastids off more.
Then one day, we were sitting in the living room with the TV off (a rare occurence at Kasa Kalhoun). We could hear the house buzzing. I decided to call another exterminator. They showed up at night with stethescopes and listened to the walls and found the problem area. They removed a section of siding and inside was a hive, about 4 layers thick and it went from the ground all the way up and started curving into the second story area (about 12 ft). Since the original exterminator had already poisoned, they decided to spray some liquid poison on it rather than trying to lure them out with “essence of queen bee”. Then they took the sections of hive out. They were scooping dead handfuls of bees out of the wall (filling buckets with them!! :eek: ). They estimated at least 10,000 bees in the colony.
The highlight of the ordeal is when a female member of the extermination team got a bee under her shirt. She whipped off her shirt and went running through the yard topless. Luckily, Mr. K and his buddy were there to say, “Don’t worry, lady! We’ll get the bee for ya!” :rolleyes:
I’m still nervous any time I see a stinging creature hovering around the same spot for too long.
Then one day
Heh, If I found out I was essentially living inside a giant hive filled with tens of thousands of buzzing, stinging bugs, the repair bill would probably be less than the bill for my therapy.
Seriously though, I am both fascinated by and horrified by the social insects.
You’re preaching to the choir there, my friend. I’m a screaming, running, freaking moron at the sight of the social insects. This ordeal launched me into a near-catatonic state!
I think the extermination cost under $200. This was like 15 years ago, so the details are kinda fuzzy. Fuzzy like BEE LEGS.
Given that we’ve not actually identified the species in question, I think advice for DIY extermination is a bad idea, much more so if there’s an allergy question.
If, for example, we’re talking about yellowjacket-type wasps (which some people will call ‘hornets’ - I’ve noticed that there’s often a fair scope for misidentification of flying, stinging things), then knocking the nest down with a stick will be quite a dangerous thing to do.
Call the professionals. A bloke will turn up in a beekeepers suit and will apply insecticide with an applicator mounted on a long pole, and it will all be taken care of. Forking out a small amount of money is less unpleasant than multiple wasp stings.
The plural of reckless incendiary anecdote is not ‘safety’. Any folks who might have burned themselves to death attempting this are not here to present the other side of the argument.
When I worked on a dairy farm, I was in charge of yellow-jacket/wasp extermination (mostly cause I am about 2 generations removed from being a complete barbarian). Anyway, the trick was a garden sprayer (with adjustable nozzle) filled with diesel fuel and a dose of concentrated bee/wasp killer. Adjust the nozzle so that the spray is just spreading out to about foot in diameter at the range you’ll be working at and spray away, with the first 5-10 seconds being dedicated to thoroughly dousing the nest/hive. Wait a tick, then ambush any stragglers who attempt to take flight-there won’t be many, and the spray renders them flightless in 1-2 seconds. Mostly they will fall to the ground in a writhing pile directly below the nest. I must have taken out a dozen or so nests in this way, without ever being stung. I’ve also had good luck using a similar approach with canned sprays in residential settings.
Then again, in light of possible allergic reactions, I’d recommend you call your nearest redneck and bribe them with Old Milwaukee…And remember not to ‘rock’ (throw rocks at) the nest unless you are fond of spontaneous and frantic cardio workouts. Just sayin’.
Maybe its a redneck/barbarian thing, but am I the only one who finds humor in a the fact that a poster who named him/herself after a groundhog needs help disposing of a yellow-jacket nest?
whistlepig, the off the shlf stuff works, but YOU better not use it. Do like incensed says and bribe a redneck. BTW incensed, you used deisel in a garden sprayer? WTF were you thinking? Compression is how deisel ignites. I wouldn’t try that again.
/sight hijack/ whistlepig, is your username related to the whistlepigs that make excellent redneck sport shooting? I hunted them in Idaho years ago, loads of fun. /slight hijack/
I’m not saying it was the brightest idea, I was just countering DrDeth’s exaggerated claim that this will get you burned, arrested, stung, Darwin award, etc. The OP has options.
Besides, every exterminator has a first day on the job.
:eek: Jeebus, I nearly died a fiery death-dozens of times!!!
Wait a minute, a diesel (I before E) engine is significantly heavy/stronger than a gasoline engine so that it can withstand the pressures need to ignite its fuel via compression-Surely I couldn’t ignite diesel fuel in a hand pumped plastic garden sprayer.
Hmmm…
I need to learn more about the situation. So-
First off, the air inside a diesel engine is typically 1300-1650 degrees farenheit when the fuel is injected, and diesel fuel’s autoignition temperature is 410 degrees farenheit, meaning, unless I’ve misunderstood, that you can bake it in a bundt pan at 350 degrees without any side effects worse than making your kitchen smell like a tractor shed. The plastic pump I was using would have melted before the diesel fuel inside of it would have ignited.
Further, a diesel engine customarily operates at a 14:1 compression ratio (ranging all the way up to and beyond 25:1), which means it is pressurized at roughly 203 psi at sea level. I’ve just looked up a 2 gallon stainless steel garden sprayer which states it maximum pressure as 45 psi. Even if diesel only need be compressed at a 7:1 ratio (50% less than it is typical in an engine) to ignite, the sprayer’s tank would split/explode or its pumping mechanism would fail long before you reached this threshold.
So in closing, would I put diesel fuel in a garden sprayer again? Yes-call me, you can watch-from a safe distance of course. Would I do that and then pump the thing for half an hour? No, but I wouldn’t do that even if the tank was empty.
Diesel fuel is commonly used as a carrier liquid in dispersing herbicides and pesticides in both hand-held sprayers and large, tractor powered sprayers.
There is no danger of ignition at the pressure/temperature rates associated with sprayers.
Anybody that can blend diesel engine talk, spelling correction and fiery bug extermination in one post, then plant the seed of a delightfully warped bundt cake experiment totally belongs on these boards.
Sure, and some of those options are more likely to result in fiery, screaming death, or destruction of property than others.
I’m not sure what you mean by this, but even on the first day of the job, an inexperienced exterminator is still presumably going to be properly equipped and trained and at least somewhat averse to reckless action.
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