I saw a hornet nest at Texas A&M once. It was like 10 ft across. I think it was almost a record. I forget how many queens there were in it. You did not want to stumble across that in your shed.
I saw a hornet nest at Texas A&M once. It was like 10 ft across. I think it was almost a record. I forget how many queens there were in it. You did not want to stumble across that in your shed.
We have been having a terrible time with hornets around here this summer. Last night I was standing out in the yard talking to the neighbor and noticed hornet after hornet coming out of one of the fence posts (hollow metal tube) 
. I used 3 cans of spray last night going around spraying all of the nests that I could find. Granted I obviously had not thought about this in advance I was wearing shorts and and old pair of flip flops. Just the stuff to wear when you piss off big nests of stinging things.
Never seen hornets in a fence post, or anywhere near the ground. Around here, they are all up in the trees, in the smooth sided nests that are roughly the size of a basketball.
Wasps (mostly red wasps) are in the nests with the exposed grid.
Yellow Jackets live in the ground and suck, but are the easiest to kill, with the gasoline and match method.
DILYSI Dave wrote: Yellow Jackets live in the ground and suck, but are the easiest to kill, with the gasoline and match method.
And all the little Whos in Whoville say that Dave Hardy's Exxon stock went up a percentage of a point that day.
Hahaha. Well, I finally pretttty much took care of them. Haven't seen any buzzing around in my area, but I've only found like 3 dead, and one I know I killed (the one that was there this morning... sprayed him in the face but I couldn't find him). Okay thats not that many but I really haven't been looking that hard. Great ideas. Got one of the good patches welded in... now just 1 more patch on the unibody I believe till I have to weld on the fender and hatch. This is taking forever... I feel like if I'm doing all this work I should be doing it on a real classic!
Oh, BTW, I give it 2 more days until gas prices skyrocket. It's just the pattern. They let it go down slowly and slowly for 2-3 weeks, then jump em up higher than ever before. It's happened like 4 or 5 times now. They'll find some excuse. "There was so much rain in Texas that all the crops started growing and the freight demand was so high that the oil was being consumed more rapidly than it could be produced" or some crap
How come no one has tried using an upside down can of compressed air, or that stuff they use to break gum loose from movie theater floors. Instantaneously freezing pests is fun.
Does anyone have a good method for killing wasps in the garage? There's a colony of them in there somewhere and I'm tired of beeing chased out of the garage.
Oh, and I can't find bug bombs at any of the local Big Box stores.
Shotgun?
Follow one to the nest. They are usually either coming or going. Then hit the nest with the wasp and hornet spray. I prefer the non-foaming.
Dr. Hess wrote: Shotgun?
True story: a girl who lived in the same apartment building as me had a wasp or hornet or etc crawling on her ceiling. This bothered her, so she tried to shoot it with a .22 pistol. Good thing the upstairs apartment was vacant. Yeah, I think alcohol was involved.
my great uncle was a cop in small town texas (midlothian i think) when the principal at the school called to have him come take care of a snake in a classroom, his tool of choice was the 12 ga. shotgun. they didn't call him to get snakes out of classrooms anymore
Dr. Hess wrote: Shotgun?
Doh, why didnt i think of that!
captainzib wrote: How come no one has tried using an upside down can of compressed air, or that stuff they use to break gum loose from movie theater floors. Instantaneously freezing pests is fun.
We use CO2 fire extinguishers to remove bats from houses. Freezes 'em stiff for about five minutes.
We have what has to be a HUUUUGE Yellow jacket nest at our new house. I count two entrances- one atthe base of a tree that right next to my shed, and the other is under the side of the shed.
I used gasoline at my last house, but they were in the middle of a hill and easy to get.
There is no way to get these little bastards this time without getting stung all to hell.
My exterminator wants $95 to get them.
I am thinking thats the way to go since I dont really care to get stung, and I have no clue how big this nest is.
Yeah...since all the fun methods involve potentially blowing up you, your neighbors, your shed, or all of the above...that $95 maybe money well spent ;).
Yesterday I mowed. Apparently the wasps like my $30 rider mower as a nesting spot. They don't mind when I'm pumping up the tires...but when it fires up...whew are they pissed then!
At one point, while mowing, I look down and spot a wasp sitting on my pants leg. I did a Homer-esque "AH!" and pretty much bailed out. Funny thing was I let go of the brake and lurched into the house with the mower before yanking it out of gear and bailing out with flailing arms.
Probably looked most entertaining to any potential onlookers!
Clem
My nephew mowed over a nest of yellow jackets this weekend. Scared me because he was the one with severe allergies growing up. Meaning eating peanuts will send him to the ER, severe. We were killing yellow jackets in the house even hours later. Apparently, once the start biting they don't like stopping.
ClemSparks wrote: Yeah...since all the fun methods involve potentially blowing up you, your neighbors, your shed, or all of the above...that $95 maybe money well spent ;). Yesterday I mowed. Apparently the wasps like my $30 rider mower as a nesting spot. They don't mind when I'm pumping up the tires...but when it fires up...whew are they pissed then! At one point, while mowing, I look down and spot a wasp sitting on my pants leg. I did a Homer-esque "AH!" and pretty much bailed out. Funny thing was I let go of the brake and lurched into the house with the mower before yanking it out of gear and bailing out with flailing arms. Probably looked most entertaining to any potential onlookers! Clem
I was mowing the back yard at the last house and in my zeal to get as close as possible to the fence I was letting the edge of my riding mower deck clip the fence posts. Unbeknownst to me, there was a rather sizeable wasp nest between one post and the fence board. I hit the post and they came buzzing out PISSED. I was wearing swim trunks with sneakers, no shirt (ugh, what a terrible sight) and the lil' bastids zapped me on the back and both legs. I bailed off the mower instantly and it went probably another 20 feet before it stopped because my mower don't got no lawyer switches. Like Clem, I went running and screaming into the garage.
I am not one to dump gasoline generally, but I made an exception in this case. It was fun watching them wriggle and curl up. 
Last year, I was mowing around the pool and must have hit an underground nest. As soon as I felt something happening, I immediately let go of the mower and dove into the pool, shoes and all. I never saw a single bee, but I was stung 12 times from the knee down.
I had a pretty nice sized wasp nest on the back of my house, and they'd be buzzing around me every time I went out the back door to go to the garage. I grew tired of this one day, and went to the garage to find carb cleaner, brake cleaner, WD40...anything. Well, I was out of just about everything. All I could find was spray adhesive. I still have wasp carcasses (or what's left of them) stuck to the back of my house, and that's been a few years.
While riding north of Sturgis one year, I had a hornet fly up my pant leg, then down into my boot, trying to get out and now quite pissed off. That was phun.
I've watched (cross-eyed) 2 wasps fight it out on the front part of my helmet, INSIDE the visor. The helmet in question whistles from 5-30 MPH, so I would crack it open just a bit, made riding while wearing it less annoying. Since then, I have put up with the noise. Surprisingly, I didn't get bit.
Just last weekend while mountain-biking, I came around a turn, went through a spider web & felt something wiggling in my helmet. I of course freaked, seeing as I hate spiders, and basically jumped off my bike while it was still rolling, fighting frantically to rip the helmet off my head, the whole time screaming like a little girl.
Needless to say, I was surprised when a wasp flew out as soon as I took my helmet off. I was also a bit relieved, both by the fact that it wasn't a spider and that I didn't get stung!
I don't generally mind spiders. I have made a couple of exceptions, like the time I was riding my dirt bike in the Manchester State Forest and went through a spiderweb. It was one of those huge yellow and black garden spiders like this one:
I felt it hit, looked down and it was hanging on the front of my chest protector. I leaped off the bike, just let it roll away into the woods and started flailing at my chest. My brother was riding behind me and nearly killed himself laughing. Bastid. 
Malathion Plus by ORTHO or whatever they call it. I get mine at a garden shop. You're supposed to mix it like two teaspoons to a gallon, but I do about 4-6 ounces to a gallon in a pump spayer and SMOKE DEM BITCHES! Spay the nest at dusk and it 's funny to see them come staggering out. Then zap them with the fly zapper flapper.thingy. I used to have ground bees all around the pool. Because I grew up in a city, I had no idea what a ground bee was. I learned when I ran over a nest of them in my yard. I went to the local garden shop and asked what to get. The old timer at the counter told me to get this and mix it up strong. Man, it does wasps, bees, ants, mosquitoes, beetles mites, spiders-all you see the next day is a bunch of little corpses. Just make sure you're upwind of whatever you spray, if not, your heart beats a little funny, and you feel sort of spacey.
minimac wrote: Just make sure you're upwind of whatever you spray, if not, your heart beats a little funny, and you feel sort of spacey.
For some reason, this made me literally laugh out loud. Also, the aforementioned electric bug zapper racket things are pretty fun to use on your friends too. It only works once so make it good.
I was working on my newest acquisition the other night and pulled off a fender only to be greeted by some wasps. It was night time, so my only like was a 500w halogen deal. Well that thing must have had them confused or something, because they didn't seem to be bothered by me all that much. Whatever the case, I got 'em with some Brakleen. I couldn't believe it - it was instant death for them! I was stunned at how effective it was.
That stuff isn't flamable, BTW. I thought it was too.
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