More Hornets ...

[sussex 5,776]

Working in the garden after a few weeks away and noticed the big Hornets are back , they seem to have moved a few feet from where they were going in before , would this be another nest or a few stragglers starting again ? Seemed a lot of activity going under the weather boarding a couple of boards down from the eves ..been out and zapped them and will do it again later . After spraying them I watched thirty or forty dropping out the nest ..poxy things ..

[ratattack 111]

You didn't get the queen first time around. Might get away with it now as it's getting a bit colder at night now.

[ZacB 110]

With the weather changing to colder they'll have all died off in a few weeks so I wouldn't worry too much. The existing queen should have died / will die shortly so no further larva, new queens will have been produced which will hibernate over winter somewhere else and your colony as already said will just disappear. Quite sad really, our European hornets munch quite a few pests & aren't too aggressive - just be ready for the shitty tempered Asians that are in Europe to jump across the channel, then we'll have a problem

[Phil Lloyd 10,736]

Good, accurate breakdown on the Hornet situation there ZacB...

Done 40 + Hornet nest this season,...all but two,..were easy work,..because, in the main,..although they are an Apex style insect and fat and juicy,..they are not, as a rule, on a par with a busy wasp nest...If Hornets attack,.it is pretty awesome, but usually, they just act dumb,..confused,..and die pretty quick...

 

I always feel slightly sorry for them,..but there ya go,.we do, what we do, eh...

[comanche 2,799]

I think hornets are my favourite insect. Away from the nest they are so benign. They also seem to display a high degree of intelligence for an insect and are very aware of being watched.. Wind em up at the nest though and they can do a good impersonation of a squadron of Stukas!

.

[Waz 4,202]

With the weather changing to colder they'll have all died off in a few weeks so I wouldn't worry too much. The existing queen should have died / will die shortly so no further larva, new queens will have been produced which will hibernate over winter somewhere else and your colony as already said will just disappear. Quite sad really, our European hornets munch quite a few pests & aren't too aggressive - just be ready for the shitty tempered Asians that are in Europe to jump across the channel, then we'll have a problem

I am a fair bit further south, but ive dealt with hornets nests after frosts & they are still alive n kicking.

Asians arent any more agressive/defensive than european hornets.

[comanche 2,799]

I do wonder how well Asian hornets will do in this country.For instance whether our summers will be long enough for them to

consistently nest with success.

I agree with Phil regarding our native hornets;it's usually possible to get in with the lance and retire without doing anything more than confuse the poor things.

The worse scenarios are when the nest has already been disturbed . The hornets seem to post guards who stand duty for hours waiting for the next interloper. Strangely nests in houses seem to be calmer than those in more natural surroundings.

I had a call this year from a campsite operator who had recieved reports of ramblers and their dogs being attacked in a section of footpath through a wood. As the victims were campsite guests they had no local knowledge and not surprisingly none had returned to pin-point the source of the terror.

So with the vaguest of directions , fully suited and with a mind-set somewhere between Hercule Poirot and Hawkeye I made my way through the wood. There were plenty of rotting ash trees but no obvious flightpaths let alone holes brimming with hornet sentries.

After about a hundred yards I spotted a tennis ball on the path and the bit of Poirot(more like Columbo those who know my dress-sense might say) in my brain kicked-in.

"Ah ha,could that ball have been abandoned by a terrified dog?" I thought to myself in a Belgian accent.

At this moment I became aware that the site-warden who was supposed to be wardening potential ramblers away from the wood was right behind me. He had never seen a hornets' nest apparently.

Well he saw one now . The nest was at ground-level in the roots of an oak right on the footpath. What's more they were ready for a fight. Amazingly they by-passed me with my conspicuous alien bee-suit and three layers of armoured underwear and started after the poor bloke behind me. More amazingly-probably due to his youth and speed- he escaped un-stung but apparently he could feel them pinging-off the back of his fleece until he reached the edge of the wood.

But then this lot were in a vulnerable position and had been wound-up over the course of several days. Sadly they had to go but as Phil mentions I still felt a bit sad.

Edited September 18, 2017 by comanche

[LuckOrJudgement 437]

I was at a very active hornets nest yesterday. It was behind some broken cladding on an outbuilding next to the householders backdoor and there was a steady flight of them coming and going to some nearby woods.

After weighing up the pros and cons, (money was not the issue) the guy suddenly decided he didn't want them destroyed. I'd only driven a couple of miles out of my way, so I wasn't peeved - sometimes it's good to live and let live.

Mind you, it did remind me that one should always try and gauge the punters intentions during the initial phone call and NOT after driving x no. of miles for nothing.

[Phil Lloyd 10,736]

Good stories there fellahs,

 

in fact, my personal dictum towards customers has always been, to 'Grill em on the phone, as though you are the Gestapo',...it pays off in the long run

[comanche 2,799]

Good stories there fellahs,

 

in fact, my personal dictum towards customers has always been, to 'Grill em on the phone, as though you are the Gestapo',...it pays off in the long run

I still get it wrong... Though I've become pretty good at dealing with customers who say they definatly have a mouse-nest because they can hear them gnawing at a particular place in the wall or the ceiling .

I ask them "Does it sound like this,"and start making funny clicking noises down the phone. If they say "Yes",I tell em to look out of the window and see if they can spot a line of Jaspers going back and forth.

It saves me oiking out the mouse-bait when I'm in full-on wasp busting mode.

Though one day I'm sure a potential customer is going to call me a weird nutter and slam the phone down.

[Waz 4,202]

One of my bestest mates phoned me last Friday to check on things for Sunday - our hunts 1st drive.

He told me it was nearly his funeral as last weekend he was in the scrub with the hounds holding a boar, he got stung 8 times by hornets, he panicked (tell you why in a minute) and headed to the road and flagged down the 1st car, and told the driver to take him straight to hospital, by the time he got to hospital he had stopped breathing.

 

I first met him out digging in 2004, early in the big game season I was with him following hounds when he disturbed hornets, he took 14 stings mostly on the head, I heard a bit of moaning in the scrub and beat a path to him, and dragged him to a bit of a clearing all the time blowing the horn for help. Anyway long story short he went into body shut down, his body emptied itself and then went into a coma, he was out of hospital in a few days and hunting the following week!

 

The last incident he was discharged and told to stay at home for a week, 2 days later he was back at work followed by a weekend out with his hounds. He's a bit of a man mountain. & im very glad it wasnt his funeral.

[bird 9,587]

Good, accurate breakdown on the Hornet situation there ZacB...

Done 40 + Hornet nest this season,...all but two,..were easy work,..because, in the main,..although they are an Apex style insect and fat and juicy,..they are not, as a rule, on a par with a busy wasp nest...If Hornets attack,.it is pretty awesome, but usually, they just act dumb,..confused,..and die pretty quick...

 

I always feel slightly sorry for them,..but there ya go,.we do, what we do, eh...

 

i know insects have to be controlled , and as you say its your job, but just as thought , i they not doing any damage to building and not attacking people why kill them .? when i had wasp nest in my garden shed , they needed sorting out as the prats were having go at me when i went in my shed , which is fair enough . if a pest is carrying disease and danger to people like rats etc fair enough .! but got the feeling the Hornet is not .?

[comanche 2,799]

 

Good, accurate breakdown on the Hornet situation there ZacB...

Done 40 + Hornet nest this season,...all but two,..were easy work,..because, in the main,..although they are an Apex style insect and fat and juicy,..they are not, as a rule, on a par with a busy wasp nest...If Hornets attack,.it is pretty awesome, but usually, they just act dumb,..confused,..and die pretty quick...

 

I always feel slightly sorry for them,..but there ya go,.we do, what we do, eh...

 

i know insects have to be controlled , and as you say its your job, but just as thought , i they not doing any damage to building and not attacking people why kill them .? when i had wasp nest in my garden shed , they needed sorting out as the prats were having go at me when i went in my shed , which is fair enough . if a pest is carrying disease and danger to people like rats etc fair enough .! but got the feeling the Hornet is not .?

 

Wasps and hornets are greatly underestimated as carriers of bacteria that contaminates human food. Everyone knows that flies spread bacteria because of their lifestyle. Wasps and hornets (that are of course a big species of wasp) catch a lot of flies and thus pick-up bacteria and may then decide to settle on a kitchen work-top,a soft-drink bottle and shop produce as well as making merry in food factories.

Half the wasps in one survey were found to carry E coli and a lot tested positive for salmonella. They also damage soft fruit and rob bee hives of both honey and the inhabitants.Hornets are particuarly unpopular with bee-keepers as they are rather good at this sort of piracy and have been known to wipe-out a hive..

As wasps and hornets also take catterpillars and moths that contain histamene they can also trigger allergies amongst susceptable humans by their proximity. Add to this the ten or eleven main venoms (not including a load of others in almost imeasurable doses) that wasps carry in their own poison sacs and it becomes easier to understand why we should be a little wary of too much familiarity between "us and them". The venoms involved are apparently of a type evolved especially to produce pain and damage the tissues around the sting-site to allow that pain to be maximised.

So a jasper's sting not only pumps a potent cocktail of venom into its victim; it can also introduce bacteria and irritants from the insects it has preyed upon,as well as any toxic substances from plants it has visited, into the sting-site.

 

It's an arrogant failing of humans to value other creatures for their usefullness or otherwise to Man. Hence too many folk hold to the the bees=good,wasps = bad ,outlook. Wasps do loads of things that even from skewed ,self-obsessed human perspectives should out-balence the predudice against them. The obvious ones being pollination,carcass removal and the very effective control of other insects that humans consider noxious .

 

 

Hornets are great,spectacular things . Around the nest they can go from calm to Kamikazi in seconds if they thing a potential predator is taking too much interest. Away from the nest they come across as benign,sometimes inquisitive creatures and in these situations most people are stung by accident. Hornets habitually fly at night,hunting moths and other insects and using the cover of darkness to gather wood for the nest. Unfortunatly warm late-summer evenings coupled with open windows and the use of electric lights as dusk falls earlier each evening mean that hornets tend to be drawn into houses at night. They end up in the strangest of places,lost ,hungry and dopey. Then without meaning to hurt anyone they get themselves trodden-on ,sat on and rolled-on in bed. . And people get stung.

 

The truth is though that people just worry when they have a hornets'nest in too close a proximity to their daily activities. A nest in a shed,or garage,or hen run or tree in the garden,or garage means people can't go about their business without risking or worrying about recieving a jabbing that will hurt or possibly send them, or their families, or visitors, or the window-cleaner into a coma,or worse.

It can affect their enjoyment of their home and is a very real potential risk.

 

So we kill em.

 

 

I always tell customers who claim to be struggling with the dilemma that there is nothing unnatural about protecting their home or family from threats. If a human sticks a hand in a squirrel drey it'll probably be bitten. If a Queen wasp or hornet builds a nest in someone else's home its not unnatural for the home-owner to defend their territory.If the hornets are safely at the end of the garden I sometimes suggest leaving them alone to do "hornet things" all summer and see if they cause trouble as autumn approaches and possibly gravitate to the house. If the nest is in proximity to people on -balence there are risks involved in ignoring it.

 

In the greater scheme we only kill a tiny percentage of the annual nests and there are far greater forces at work which affect the prosperity of wasps and hornets from year to year.

 

I still love hornets

Edited September 19, 2017 by comanche

[Phil Lloyd 10,736]

Sensible answer Sir....