Bald Faced Hornet's Nest Removal?

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Dam I hate wasps (Childhood sting incident) although I don't fear them.

We have had problems in the past.

I usually Gas them out out or wack the nest with the chimney sweep. If you have a nice population of 'Garden friendly Ants' they should take care of the nest once its on the ground.
 
Make sure the spray you use has ability to keep working after the carrier has evaporated, bunch of cheap stuff out there right now that doesn't.
 
Warm_in_NH said:
I gotta admit I've been "watching" this thread waiting for this very moment. It's like watching a boat heading for the reef, you know it's gonna be bad but you can't look away.

If it's within reach, gear up and then just bag it and let em suffocate.

If you decide to shoot it up just be mindful of what's behind it as those pellets will keep on going.

Good luck!
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It is within reach, now you got me re-evaluating my plan of attack. I am pretty rural so the pellet gun assault will be incident free. As vicious as these guys have gotten over the last 3 days, I am starting to lean more heavily to the exterminator route...they are in my head now and around every corner, that ship maybe making a hard left.
 
Fear not Warm in NH, the mission has been aborted, the pros have been called in. I hate to pay for something like this, but I think Eaten By Limestone said it best when he said calling in a pro will be cheaper than a trip to the ER. Foolish pride will not get me this time, plus I get to watch the carnage from safe distance!
 
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Utilitrack said:
Fear not Warm in NH, the mission has been aborted, the pros have been called in. I hate to pay for something like this, but I think Eaten By Limestone said it best when he said calling in a pro will be cheaper than a trip to the ER. Foolish pride will not get me this time, plus I get to watch the carnage from safe distance!
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Foolish pride is not correct that's intellectual curiosity! Logical thinking has led you to the best option.
Next year you may deal with these buggers returning so be careful then too.
Mom had yellow jackets try this, but they were finally defeated.
 
We had a nest of those (#*&$(^&# build in the top of my kids swing set. One day they came after my wife and stung her 3 or 4 times when she was just walking by. Those buggers are VERY aggressive, worse even than yellowjackets. Ive been told that if you try and spray the nest and dont get them all the survivors will swarm and chase you all the way down the street.


In this case I paid the $150 and hired a pest guy.

Be safe.
 
We have them here. Every year we wonder where they'll pop up and we simply watch them. We don't eradicate them. Nor do we "piss them off", lol. I've never been stung, the good man was once when he brushed one off before realizing what it was and letting it fly off on its own. We simply co-exist. We keep an eye out for them and as long as we know where they've set up camp, we're OK with them. We know they're around because we see them occasionally, but for the past couple of years we've not seen the nest. I have an abandoned nest in my shop and many people flip out when they "notice" it because they have no idea how that it's completely benign.

They're interesting. The nest you see is entirely the work of one season. The subtle changes in color of the "paper" are fascinating and give insight into what they chew up to increase the size of the nest. How big it gets depends entirely on how big the colony is. Most interesting to us is the conical entrance to the nest... when it's hot you can see wasps lined up at the entrance fanning their wings to force cooler air up and through the combs. At the end of the season the fertilized queen "goes to ground" and overwinters in logs or underground. In the springtime she emerges, lays eggs, and the progeny begins work on the new nest.
 
Bobbin said:
We don't eradicate them.
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I think you would have changed your mind if you had been sitting in my basement office three years ago and would every once in a while get dive bombed by one. Finally found where they were coming in through a gap in the mortar of the chimney, plugged it and then tracked back to the nest hanging in a tree thirty feet away. And thoroughly pissed them off. Then cleaned the 12 gauge.
 
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I didn't live where you live(d) 3 yrs. ago. Read on, Brother... We've lived here for 23 yrs. now and only one sting in all that time.

Funny story: one year there was a nest in the Hydrangea grandiflora on the south side of our home, about 10' from the slider that lead from Mum's room to the terrace. The hydrangea was just glorious that year, cascading in an umbrella weighed down by the blossoms. Mum spent nearly every day in her chair in its shade, with a book/magazine. One late summer afternoon the good man happened to "discover" the nest... . We alerted Mum, showed it to her and asked what she thought about its presence. "Well, dear, it's been established for some time and nothing has come of it. Leave well enough alone."

You guys do whatever you feel necessary. Our experience has indicated no such drastic intervention has ever been necessary.
 
Well I'm not real proud of it but my "live and let live" mantra transformed to "kill or hurt and swell" this weekend.
While working on a deck a yellow jacket got me good on the ankle. I found the nest nearby in the ground. War ensued. I won.
I observed that the little buggers seem to trigger on movement rather than presence alone.
I found that even if I was relatively close to their mad response, if I stood still they left me alone. Sort of like dealing with a T. Rex I guess.
 
Yes.. l live and let live with honeybees an bumblebees. We always get lots of bumblebees around the flowers my wife plants at the backdoor. They dont bother us at all. I even brush past and they just go back to munching on flowers.

Yellowjackts and hornets however.. are just mean. and gotta go.
 
Bobbin said:
We have them here. Every year we wonder where they'll pop up and we simply watch them. We don't eradicate them. Nor do we "piss them off", lol. I've never been stung, the good man was once when he brushed one off before realizing what it was and letting it fly off on its own. We simply co-exist. We keep an eye out for them and as long as we know where they've set up camp, we're OK with them. We know they're around because we see them occasionally, but for the past couple of years we've not seen the nest. I have an abandoned nest in my shop and many people flip out when they "notice" it because they have no idea how that it's completely benign.

They're interesting. The nest you see is entirely the work of one season. The subtle changes in color of the "paper" are fascinating and give insight into what they chew up to increase the size of the nest. How big it gets depends entirely on how big the colony is. Most interesting to us is the conical entrance to the nest... when it's hot you can see wasps lined up at the entrance fanning their wings to force cooler air up and through the combs. At the end of the season the fertilized queen "goes to ground" and overwinters in logs or underground. In the springtime she emerges, lays eggs, and the progeny begins work on the new nest.
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I tried that route, unfortunately for them they decided to not play along. With myself and my son being allergic and kids, friends and our pets frequenting the backyard, their aggression got to be too much of a risk for our situation.
 
I have switched from sprays and brake cleaner to dish soap in a squirt gun. It kills them almost as fast and just as dead. I read that they breath through their skin and the soap suffocates them. I wait until dark and go Rambo on the. I have gotten rid of 5 nests this year using this method.
 
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Fifelaker said:
I have switched from sprays and brake cleaner to dish soap in a squirt gun. It kills them almost as fast and just as dead. I read that they breath through their skin and the soap suffocates them. I wait until dark and go Rambo on the. I have gotten rid of 5 nests this year using this method.
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Interesting with the soap. I've never heard of it. They breathe through ports on their sides called spiracles.
 
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I've cleaned up a few large nests of wasps and hornets both by rigging up a shop vac hose to point strait at the nest opening (About 1 inch away). I've set up the rig using a step ladder and some tape to hold it in place, another time some random bits laying around. Anyway, if you move slowly while setting up and don't make a bunch of noise, I found they pretty much ignored me until I turned on the shop vac. At that point they start running out of the nest to see what's happening and promptly get sucked into the shop vac. After a while they are more cautious and you have to bang on the nest a bit and then they really get pissed and pour out of the nest strait into the vac. I left it set up and running for a few hours and by then 98% of them have been sucked up. At this point you can dispose of the nest, spray it first if you like.
This works like a charm and there's that satisfying glee of listening to the "thuk" and then bouncing down the hose and smack into the vac... at the end they're so dazed that you dump them out and they're just barely moving their legs. Squish the whole bunch with your shoe or something and problem solved.
 
Fifelaker said:
I have switched from sprays and brake cleaner to dish soap in a squirt gun. It kills them almost as fast and just as dead. I read that they breath through their skin and the soap suffocates them. I wait until dark and go Rambo on the. I have gotten rid of 5 nests this year using this method.
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Seriously? This makes me want to immediately buy the most badass Super Soaker I can find on Amazon.com now...and be able to somehow "justify it". I've never heard of such a thing.
 
stee6043 said:
Seriously? This makes me want to immediately buy the most badass Super Soaker I can find on Amazon.com now...and be able to somehow "justify it". I've never heard of such a thing.
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Yep. Dawn is what I use. Simple Green works pretty well too.
I typically use a 1 gallon garden sprayer. Not as much fun as a super soaker though.
 
Nearly slammed my head into a bald faced hornets nest the other day while mowing on my tractor. That evening, both barrels of 12 ga, #8 shot and some hornet spray (after running like a little girl) did the trick nicely. Just make sure to have your shot pattern accounted for!
 
Spletz said:
Nearly slammed my head into a bald faced hornets nest the other day while mowing on my tractor. That evening, both barrels of 12 ga, #8 shot and some hornet spray (after running like a little girl) did the trick nicely. Just make sure to have your shot pattern accounted for!
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Ha Ha Ha.

I have been inspecting the the neighbours property for nests as its apple season.
 
On youtube somewhere there is a video of North Koreans using a flamethrower on a nest in a tree.
 
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