Unwarranted fear of V. crabro has often led to the destruction of nests. This has led to the decline of the species, which is often locally threatened or even endangered. European hornets benefit from legal protection in some countries, notably Germany, where it has been illegal to kill a European hornet or nest since January 1, 1987, with a fine up to €50,000.
when young I got stung behind the ear by a mud dauber and woke up an hour later with a horrendous headache
“If it’s the meat-eating, ground-nesting wasp I grew up with — the kind that go after your ham sandwich — that’s one thing.”
… sounds like Yellow Jackets to me. They tend to go after meats earlier in the year, and switch to sweeter stuff as the summer goes on. Nasty things aren’t they. I once left an open bottle of Orange Crush on a picnic table once and in 20 minutes, it had almost 30 yellow jackets inside of it. My daughter is allergic to wasps, so we need to be careful.
“If it’s eating the mosquitos that gather around you — consider the alternative.” …. seconds on this. There used to be a product that was essentially encapsulated “Sevin / Carbaryl (from above).” The usage was to put it onto an attractant and leave it out. It would take out all nests in a large area. If you used a meat attractant, you would take out yellow jackets, if you used something sweet, you would take out everything. The product was banned as it was basically an area bomb taking out nuisance and beneficial.
I have probably been stung 7-8 times over the years, the joys of growing up / living in the country. In virtually all cases, it was an accidental encounter, from putting my hand down on one I did not see, to yard work which was the last three …. all yellow jackets, and all ground nests. One mowing, and two weed whipping. As the equipment is loud, you don’t hear them, the first time you notice is when you are being stung.
We’ve been out here since ’72, don’t have any ground hornets or wasps but we’ve seen Bumblebees use the ground or the rafters in our open shed, they bore holes in the 2x6’s and cover my white Dodge Caravan with yellow wood pulp and mess.
With some dying and dead trees around the yard, the paper nests of the yellow jackets are in abundance as they use the dead wood to make their paper. Wouldn’t surprise me if I went outside right now and found 1000 or more to kill off. I leave the high ones alone, usually only do something about it when the nest is within a danger zone… they get really perturbed when we come within about 3 meters or less typically and when I’m mowing I’ve come inches from jamming one in my face I can’t say how many times. 2 years ago I got stung on the shoulder and it actually saved me, when I ducked away from the sting it kept me from running head on into a nest with nearly 200 jellow jackets on it! I was picking up sticks and dog toys, getting ready to mow, so I was looking down at the ground and didn’t see the nest on a low limb, square in front of my face.
I don’t think 2 Epi Pens would have saved me had I run into that nest… we’re about 15-20 minutes from the hospital.
Wauw educational topic!
Hornets don’t control queen Ls with pheromone, didn’t know that.
Hank thanks, family told me the fake nest worked but diving a bit more into it yes seems not effective (glad we did not made them )
Dale, maybe try our method of finding the right contents for traps for your stingers.
We had hornets (European and Asian) to deal with but love the bees and bumblebee species (sitting under the wisteria in second bloom so the big black bumblebees fly again here now)
Bees and bumblebees don’t like wine
So our spring traps were
Bottle top 25% cut of
20% filled with water
5% lemonade
3 tablespoons of kefir grains very much alive
Splash of wine
Top part bottle upside down as funnel in the bottle
Piece of iron wire heated and pushed through the top and funnel to secure it, easy opening and cleaning and hang it in trees.
Besides hornets al lot of other insects evolved to go after CO2 (that is what the kefir is producing) were in there, horseflies, mosquitoes, flies and those nasty stinging flies we normally need to avoid by sitting under the walnut tree.
This was ideal for us with the insects we have and we got to know this by placing 25 traps close to a hornets nest at the end of the season and see what content most would attract.
Just wanted to post this, the craziest yellow jacket hive I have ever seen!
I found this video a few years ago and the image has stuck in my mind.
Just imagine if a child had wandered in there! Or even a group of adults!
Carpenter bees bother me sometimes because they make holes in our housing structures and they are loud as they buzz around you, but they are really relatively harmless. They are always buzzing around me and my guests, which scares people sometimes, but I’ve never had them bite anyone.
ah ok,given their size and fatter look I called them big black bumblebees
Carpenter bee, nce to have the proper name, and yeah there are dead trees around so I see why they are so happy here.
They love the nectar of wisteria, that is for sure, especially during the first time of blooming we have 10m x 3m of blue flowers above our front terras. No green leaves, only flowers. Heavy scented air, nie. And these carpenter bees are very funny, indeed as I just read on wiki, they are very budy chasing one another.
Gez 20.000 species of bees….
Well I have seen about 10 smaller bees (such as honey bees) more then 10 bigger more hairy of which the carpenter is the biggest.
all going for nectar so we see them on flowers (of buzzing around roof edges to find a spot for a nest (lol our car backdoor has a window that can be openend but we rarely do that, last autumn I found 20 cells of a bee/wasp species little nest. And even more LOL in an crack in wood here indoors another bigger bee type (I called this a bumblebee too) kept on flying in to make a little nest.
I stuffed it with some toothpicks since escorting her out did not help. After a few tries she flew out )
Luckily I there are mostly only paper wasps round my parts. Nests usually pop up on my balcony during the spring/summer but I typically just ignore them and they ignore me. Well except that one time when a colony nested right above rear tire of my motorcycle…they had to go in that instance! :smiling_imp:
I won’t have the proper names but here’s what we’ve got in upstate SC:
Bees- they generally leave you alone. You can swat at them without much risk and they come in several sizes and colors. All are proportionally ‘fat’ compared to others.
Wasps- they tend to nest under eaves and the nest is like the front of a multi-emitter light. It will be attached with a single stalk. If there are only a few on the nest you can knock it down quickly by hand safely. If several are there some will be ’guards ’and they will attack. Otherwise tend not to sting but can. Dark colors.
Mud Daubers- dirt tube hives and don’t sting even when you knock the nest down. Very slender and dark colors.
Yellow Jackets- almost all live in ground nests. Mean and hateful buggers. Same color schemes as some bees but more slender. You watch ahead when walking/mowing/trimming for them flying at the nest opening. Mass attack at the nest and will sting singly elsewhere. When dark well after sundown, find the nest opening via dim light or spill and pour a cup of gasoline down the hole. They won’t see sunup. The ones nesting elsewhere are a little less aggressive. Those nests are like wasps but the whole nest attaches to the structure instead of on a stalk.
Hornets- Mean and hateful x2. Watch out for the ‘gray paper’ nest. If it’s accessible and safe you can burn them up in the nest late at night. I’ve soaked a few nests with pesticides at night which worked after a couple days. Slender and dark colors. There’s a variant we call a “Japanese Hornet” that’s like an elongated giant bee in color and they have an equally big sting when provoked. The bigger abandoned nests can bring decent prices as they’re in demand for display and decoration purposes ($50+)!
Carpenter Bees- big big big, the males hover near the nest hole and act agressive but it’s all show. Fun to use as a badminton birdie. Only females in the nest will sting. Nest is a 1/2 (13mm) round hole in wood. What you don’t see is how much wood they eat past the opening- they give termites a close race destroying wood. ‘Oogle ” Carpenter Bee Trap’, those really work but have to be in place by early spring to be effective. Caulk holes closed and paint well leaving no raw wood exposed anywhere to help deter them.
AFAIK all these have a good and useful purpose so leave them alone where you can, with 2 exceptions: yellow jackets in the ground are too vicious and it’s unsafe to have them near people. Carpenter Bees are safe but will eat your house up quickly so they too must go. These are so prolific here you won’t do harm taking them out of your space. Bees and their relatives do a huge amount of food plant pollination and are critical to human survival so don’t kill indiscriminately or needlessly.
Bee keepers tell me that perfume, cologne, highly scented deodorant, and having consumed alcohol recently trigger attacks. They also tell me that if you take a couple Benadryl capsules immediately after a sting it will hardly bother you, but speed is essential- after about a minute the capsules will have little effect. How that works with non-bees I don’t know. I deal with all of these critters constantly in my work on old houses, some of which have been vacant for years. Being careful I only get stung a few times a year. I once painted the outside of a vacant bee infested house at night-they were in every wall. During the day you could hear the humming 100 feet away and there were so many flying around you couldn’t work. Don’t know what the owners did but I finished and got paid
Hello, I’m new to this forum but saw the mhanlen and clicked as I thought there might be another video. As I was reading and became interested in the content, I saw this comment from Bugsy about being tagged “rude”. Glad I did because my own presumption is that his comments’ content would be 100% A-OK, however it’s nice to know that I would/may have been wrong. I read the forum rules, however, in reading along and seeing this occurrence, I guess I have a little bit better understanding for the principles involved in maintaining the forum’s atmosphere at BLF. Even pictures with crap talk are a no-no. Got it.
Glad your weren’t too severely damaged in your encounter buddy. Be careful. And not to be all codependent hijacker here BUT, I have had vertigo from vestibular neuritis for the past 10 days so, out of work, out of play. I think/hope I’m at the tail end as today seems better.
I actually had the camera rolling… and you can hear me shuffling around in the background over about 2 minutes and me finally declaring I was stung. It’s hard to tell what was going on, or I would have posted it. Plus it’s pitch black.
The key to making the traps most effective is the smoothness of the faces of the holes. A drill press with a Forstner bit does best but sanding after drilling will do. In season you can ‘collect’ a liter bottle full in 2-3 days And you never thought there were so many of them nearby!
)
And you never thought there were so many of them nearby!