A 7-person team (7 by my count) eradicated an Asian Giant Hornet's nest in Washington state, in the first officially recorded nest eradication.
The team were all clad in protective suits that look like something from a future NASA lunar habitat scenario. They carried off many dozens of the super-sized hornets (dead, by the looks of it) in a kind of vacuum bottle-looking thing that literally dwarfs the team member that's holding it.
As someone that has personally dealt with hornets (not the murder kind) more than once, I don't blame the team for 'suiting up'. It's not just the painfulness of the stings, but their pursuing aggressiveness that makes them a real pita.
As someone that has personally dealt with hornets (not the murder kind) more than once, I don't blame the team for 'suiting up'. It's not just the painfulness of the stings, but their pursuing aggressiveness that makes them a real pita.
I checked for videos of drones chopping up hornets, but did not find a good one.
I can tell you, that a 6' brush hog sitting on top of a ground hornet's nest running wide open does a pretty good job but it's the few that get out that will still make you throw the tractor into high gear and haul ass out of there. They can still outrun you tho.
If you run over one with a lawn tractor, back up over the mound, just leave the machine running, lock the clutch down and abandon mower. They'll attack the mower and leave you alone once you've moved off a ways.
If you run over one with a lawn tractor, back up over the mound, just leave the machine running, lock the clutch down and abandon mower. They'll attack the mower and leave you alone once you've moved off a ways.
So... how do you retrieve the lawn tractor? Go back at night when the hornets have bedded down... and the tractor has run out of gas?
I can tell you, that a 6' brush hog sitting on top of a ground hornet's nest running wide open does a pretty good job but it's the few that get out that will still make you throw the tractor into high gear and haul ass out of there. They can still outrun you tho.
If you run over one with a lawn tractor, back up over the mound, just leave the machine running, lock the clutch down and abandon mower. They'll attack the mower and leave you alone once you've moved off a ways.
Once my dad was laying up terraces. He made one pass and returned on another terrace row. As he started his second pass, he said he noticed a swarm of gnats and thought nothing of it until he drove into it. The yellow jackets started pinging on the coolant fan and motor shroud, then one got him on the cheek. He was very afraid of bees but he said he just put in the clutch and sat there for a moment, hoping others wouldn't find him. No luck.
When they attacked in full force, he jumped off the tractor with it still in gear. It eventually turned downhill and cut a trench through every terrace in the field until he caught up to it. A quart of gasoline that night took care of the beasts. When he got home, his face was swollen as if he'd been in a heavyweight boxing match.
Originally posted by maryjane: It's not just the painfulness of the stings, but their pursuing aggressiveness that makes them a real pita.
I can take quite a few bee stings with little notice but I was shocked at just how painful hornet stings were and how relentlessly aggressive they were until I moved to Washington!
I found them when I heard 3 kids screaming outside and found they had stepped on a nest in the ground.
I had never seen that level of aggression in flying stingy-things before. Absolutely relentless.
I immediately adopted a scorched-earth policy and drownt them with Dawn dishwashing detergent on a garden hose sprayer.
There can be only one ruler in my domain, and she said get it done!
Boondawg, were they the black and white Baldfaced Hornets? We have Baldfaced Hornets in Georgia. They're about 3/4 to an inch long and can be very aggressive if their huge strawberry-shaped paper next is disturbed. They usually build on tree limbs and make a nest that's sometimes larger than a basketball. It has been confirmed that they will align with the path of a projectile fired into their hive to find its source and they can recognize faces so if someone has disturbed their nest once, they shouldn't return to the area.
Originally posted by fierofool: It has been confirmed that they ... recognize faces so if someone has disturbed their nest once, they shouldn't return to the area.
4) They Have A Very Good Memory Bald-faced hornets can remember faces, and unfortunately there is no witness protection program to help disguise identity if a human inadvertently returns to the nest area (or from the hornet’s perspective, the scene of the crime). Once an intruder is within their sights, they will wait with all the patience of a hired hitman for their target to make another visit. They have been known to fly past other people in order to sting the invader to their nest.
This has implications that go far beyond pain and emergency rooms, as insects are not usually thought to have that kind of social intelligence. This adds a new and horrifying dimension to their capabilities to harm humans. According to Reuven Dukas, an evolutionary biologist who studies insect learning at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada: “This quality shows how we used to underestimate insect learning and cognition.The biased view that you need a giant brain to be smart is not fully correct. Animals with small brains can do much more than we used to attribute to them.”
Yeah that's a good way to get rid of ground nests. Of course you don't have to actually ignite the gas lol.. Just pouring it all over the nest is enough, it basically melts them.
Yeah that's a good way to get rid of ground nests. Of course you don't have to actually ignite the gas lol.. Just pouring it all over the nest is enough, it basically melts them.
You really have to be careful if you ignite it. We had one in an embankment on the edge of our driveway. After dumping the gasoline and waiting a bit, when we ignited it, the vapors had traveled down the ditch, through a culvert, and beyond, igniting the side of a pasture.
Sheesh. I hope its not just a matter of time. The fact they decimate "regular bees" also is bad for our ecosystem and food supply, even bypassing that they said each one can start a new colony... they can sting through bee suits, and are deadly. They seem almost designed.
They are. Yep, you heard it here 1st folks. Murder hornet queens and a couple of drones each are a result of bio-engineering in a Chinese lab and were secretly brought to the Pacific NW via one of the Chinese importers of the China Virus.
