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Hornets

Sounds like a Cicada hormet,they're pretty harmless to people though they look mean and large...the feed cicadas to there young by stinging them which paralyzes the cicada dig a burrow place egg on cicada body young hatch and eat...
 
You describe the Giant Hornet, Vespa crabro germana. I had a nest right above my work-bench. Just leave her alone and she won't bother you. Teach your children not to kill bees. Afraid of a little bee! ;)
 
don't forget to spray them early on the morning or late in the evening or else they will try to get ya
 
I stepped on a ground hornet nest when I was 9. They had made a nest in some old railroad ties. I was playing on them, jumping around, etc. It was right around sundown. They swarmed up and about killed me. I dimly remember my dad rushing me to the hospital and getting a big old shot of adrenalin. I vividly remember puking everywhere. They were still picking them off me at the hospital. I still have scars from where the little buggers were chewing on me under my clothes. The doc counted 98 stings and I was bleeding all over from their bites.

The point is be careful around those things.
 
Tony, is that the same page?? Neither is the one I got.
 
Ground hornets are attracted to the flame and noise of a propane torch. If you set one up in a safe location, they will all attack it, solving your problem. I've heard of keeping a torch on (about a foot off of the ground) for about 3 hours, and having hundreds of charred bodies below it...
 
can of axe of a can of hair spray and a lighter. spray airesol at bug, light lighter, burn bug and nest, run like h*** lol
 
For flying hornet bastards your best bet is the spray. I happen to prefer the pyrotechnic approach however.

I got into a mess with the ground variety while landscaping and had to go to the hospital. My first order before leaving was dumping my 5 gallons of diesel on the beasts' hole and lighting it.
 
You definitly need to wait until dusk/dawn becaue they are most active in the heat of the day. I am deathly afraid of this little flying beast and will run like a little school girl when I upset a nest. Ask my girlfriend she thinks its hilarious.

My favorite weapons are the eletric tennis racquet, wasp spray and starter spray/carb cleaner/ether. The racquet is good for the lone stingers but you need to pin them sometimes to get the job done. The spray works great but isn't nearly as exciting as the flamethrower from the ether.

A funny story about the ether. I had a huge wasp nest over the doorway of my last house and every time I tried to go inside they would buzz by my head. The wasp spray was inside so I couldn't get to it but I had some carburator cleaner and lighter handy. When I got ready to spray the nest down I was worried about lighting my hand on fire so I kept the lighter low. When I started spraying the lighter was too far away and I started soaking the house in fluid but I didn't want to take my eyes off of the wasps for fear of the little guys comming after me. By the time I raised the lighter high enough using my periferal vision the nest as well as the door frame was pretty soaked. When the flame lit it took off and the nest went up along with the siding. I was really stuck now, on one hand I wanted to smother the fire on the house, but on the other I didn't want to get stung by a fireball of evil stinging bug. Needless to say I had a black mark above my door for a month or two. Moral of the story don't be an idiot like me.
 
GEC said:
......We would spray them and run back into the house. We repeated this about five or six times until they were all dead.
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I found one about 5' off the ground in a bush a couple years ago - about the size of a football. We mowed past it all summer and never got stung. It was September when I found it and the evenings were cool so after it got dark and cooled off I hosed it with wasp/hornet spray from about twenty feet while my brother held the flashlight. At the first sign of a PO'd resident we both beat feet to the house. Next morning there was literally a PILE of dead hornets on the ground under the nest.

Worse yet are carpenter bees. I sprayed one once, it dipped and bobbled a bit, got his senses back and chased me all over the yard until I scooped up a badmitten racket while on a dead run. I turned and ran back toward the nasty bug and gave him a whack that put him in the grass and I then (OK, I already looked like an idiot - so, what?) did a dance on his a$$ that would shame the entire River Dance crew.
 
I was thinking bald faced hornets, they can be very nasty. I have run into them numerous times when trout fishing, the nests are built over the streams. Our main enemies here are yellow jackets and fire ants, they can be very dangerous in large numbers. Not sure if the dry weather is driving them close to homes or not, but we've had a terrible time with them this year.

Another somewhat dangerous insect we are seeing more of is the velvet ant or cow killer. They are huge, have a strong venom, and can sting multiple times. It is actually a wasp.
 
One summer when I was a kid (just after the last Ice Age), it was real dry. The hornets, mostly plain Yellow Jackets, came to drink and drown at the public pool by the 10,000's. Only a few kids got stung. BUT eventually dozens of kids got deathly ill - high fevers and convulsions. Me too. It was toxin from the YJ's dissolved in the pool water from all those corpses. :eek:

(I had eaten French Toast for breakfast, and I wouldn't eat it for years.)
 
Soapy water (lots of dishsoap) and a pressurized garden sprayer will deal with wasps, bees, hornets etc etc.
 
We get something similar to what you are describing up here in DE. I don't know what the scientific name for them are, but they are commonly reffered to as cicada killers. We used to get them in our yard all the time as kids. They'd actually make a pretty large hole that would make your yard look like crap. They'd fly around and never bother anyone.

They have HUGE stingers and sound like a helicopter flying through the air, but they were as non-aggressive as a humming bird.

That being said, my dad used to go out at night and pour gasoline down the hole. That usually worked. I wouldn't advise doing that if you have tree hugging neighbors though :)
 
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