I shall start a new thread tonight , right now i am battling for possession of my shed with a huge wasp , i mean really huge , ive never seen a wasp like this thing before, its at least 3 inches long and sounds like a helicopter, this and the preparation of some daub to repair my bathroom walls before plastering next week is making for a late finish tonight. Its all good fun though.
- Thread starter davidinsussex
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it could well have been a hornet Moo, i have just had a gander on google and thats the fella all right ,it still scared the bejesus out of me , when i first laid eyes on it i ran for cover flapping my arms around and shrieking. It was like a scene from pearl harbour.
can these barstewards sting? this one is back and has just chased me out of the garden. :evil: it was dive bombing me. I dont want to kill the poor thing but if it is going to attack me every time i go into the garden i will have no problem in splattering its horrid torso from here into next week.
oh dear. there are bees living in our thatch so the hornets will have plenty to eat.
what do i do? find and destroy the nest? this thing was definitely being aggressive towards me, flying from side to side in front of me , flying straight at me etc etc , i was certain it thought of me as a threat , especially when i started blindly waving my machete around and shouting loudly at it.
worms
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thats the very fella worms right there. i still dont fancy this guy attacking me in my garden , he did fly right at me and he did act aggressively towards me , perhaps his nest is in my shed? he does fly around the shed quite a lot. i know that wasps get aggressive when drunk on fermenting fruit and i would hate to have to spend time in my garden with 700 drunk and grumpy hornets. bees and wasps i can deal with , but these guys are really scary.
worms
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You want to be careful rummaging in the shed to look for the nest! Perhaps you can approach slowly and watch where it goes once it loses interest in you?
Flyfisher
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I've noticed quite a few hornets recently, but they don't seem to be looking for a fight. I'd be very wary of disturbing a nest though.
We had a (normal) wasp nest under a pantile last year (well, every year really), which I disturbed while painting a window and was immediately stug on the neck. I didn't even see the wasp coming - I moved the tile and about a second later I was stung. I've read that they have a strong attack instinct if the nest is disturbed and the "guard wasps" will just instantly attack anything that's moving nearby, but I'd never experienced it before.
I've also read that the attacking wasp releases a pheromone that triggers others to attack as well. Mindfull of that, I made a very quick exit and got away with just the one sting. No real harm done, but I wouldn't like to have had a few hundred angry wasps on me!
I'm sorry to say that I resorted to chemical warfare on that particular nest before finishing the painting, but I usually just leave any such nests alone. It's pretty futile, I think, to try to systematically prevent them from nesting around the place.
We had a (normal) wasp nest under a pantile last year (well, every year really), which I disturbed while painting a window and was immediately stug on the neck. I didn't even see the wasp coming - I moved the tile and about a second later I was stung. I've read that they have a strong attack instinct if the nest is disturbed and the "guard wasps" will just instantly attack anything that's moving nearby, but I'd never experienced it before.
I've also read that the attacking wasp releases a pheromone that triggers others to attack as well. Mindfull of that, I made a very quick exit and got away with just the one sting. No real harm done, but I wouldn't like to have had a few hundred angry wasps on me!
I'm sorry to say that I resorted to chemical warfare on that particular nest before finishing the painting, but I usually just leave any such nests alone. It's pretty futile, I think, to try to systematically prevent them from nesting around the place.
LadyArowana
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We had 2 wasps nests in our roof when we were renovating. I had been clearing junk out of the space and noticed what I thought was a lump of foam insulation or some such but ignored it. The electrican asked me later if I wasn't worried about being up there with it, :lol: . Dearest husband had a fit and said "what if you had poked it? it could have been very dangerous". I told him that I was a girl and I didn't need to take stuff apart or prod at it just because it was there. The lads that worked for the builder were all very girly about the whole thing when some flew in. Morphed from rap listening low trouser wearing toughs to arm waving nervous wimps, quite embarassed when I caught and put outside one particularly large buzzy thing. Chemical warfare did eventually ensue though.
Are you sure you want to go on a hornets'-nest hunt?
This (from that Wikipedia article) would send me straight to the local council's pest control officer :
Hornets, like many social wasps, can mobilize the entire nest to sting in defense, which is highly dangerous to humans. The hornet alarm pheromone is used to raise alarm of nest attack and to identify prey, such as bees. It is not advisable to kill a hornet anywhere near a nest, as the distress signal can trigger the entire nest to attack. Materials that come in contact with pheromone, such as clothes, skin, dead prey, or hornets, must be removed from the vicinity of the hornets nest. Perfumes and other volatile chemicals can be falsely identified as pheromone by the hornets and trigger an attack
This (from that Wikipedia article) would send me straight to the local council's pest control officer :
Hornets, like many social wasps, can mobilize the entire nest to sting in defense, which is highly dangerous to humans. The hornet alarm pheromone is used to raise alarm of nest attack and to identify prey, such as bees. It is not advisable to kill a hornet anywhere near a nest, as the distress signal can trigger the entire nest to attack. Materials that come in contact with pheromone, such as clothes, skin, dead prey, or hornets, must be removed from the vicinity of the hornets nest. Perfumes and other volatile chemicals can be falsely identified as pheromone by the hornets and trigger an attack
I will have a similar problem, I hope very soon - if we EVER get planning consent, and had wondered about using cork which is flexible, more easily cut to shape, I would imagine, and has some noise and heat insulating properties. Has anyone tried this? Our beams are nicely champfered and stopped but, like Robgil's, not very deep at all so whatever the solution it will need to be thin. I thought it might just be possible to stick it on with something flexible. Or try Penner's batten solution.