Hornets Are Everywhere This Year!

 

For the past month or so, I have been fascinated by two large hornet nests which are located near a state highway near my home.  It is Kentucky 1000 and I have actually written a blog post in the past about the large amount of wildlife sightings I have had along that road.  In fact, today as I was driving on that road, I saw two separate groups of wild turkeys, one of about half a dozen and the  other of three.  But these two hornets nests are located along a telephone line which services the neighborhood.  One, literally at the top of a hill along the road, is attached to the top of a telephone pole.It is a large nest and I would love to have been able to add photographs of these two nests on this blog post.  But my cell phone will not focus closely enough to do a clear photograph of the nests.  I don't currently own a working high quality camera.  The second nest is about the same size of the first, located about 200  yards down the hill from the first about 50 yards off the road in an overgrown farm through which the telephone line passes.  It is located on a guide wire to the pole instead of on the pole itself.  

I first noticed these nests a couple of weeks ago when my wife and I drove up on two young men in their late teens or early twenties who had stopped their pickup truck in the middle of the road so they could throw rocks at the nest on the top of the pole which was not the smartest thing they ever did.  I have kept an eye on these two nests every time I drive Kentucky 1000 ever since that day.  But to my surprise, yesterday, September 6, 2024, my wife and I suddenly discovered that we had an equally large hornet nest  on our house under the eaves, attached to both the brick wall and the fascia just above and to the right of our back door.  We had literally been going in and out that door and under this large hornet nest ever since the hornets began building it, God only knows how long ago. Also, about a week ago, I had been having conversation under the hornet nest with a FedEx driver whom I know pretty well who regularly delivers medication to us which Candice receives monthly from the drug manufacturer. We had stood there and talked probably ten minutes within five or six feet of the nest and neither of us noticed the hornets.  I can't wait to tell the FedEx driver about it and show him the photographs below which I shot before I sprayed the nest. 

 

I knew immediately this nest had to go.  Hornet stings can be incredibly painful and very dangerous to the victim's health even in low numbers. With the number of hornets in this nest based on the number we were seeing on the outside of the nest, we knew it had a very large number of  hornets in it.  I immediately quit using that door, checked my supply of wasp and hornet killer, and went to my local Dollar General for another can to supplement the partially used can I already had. I waited for darkness just before bedtime before I attacked the nest.  My wife Candice is in a power wheelchair and I knew that with her neurological condition only one or two stings from hornets could possibly severely affect her, or even kill, her.  She wanted to be up, in the house, near that door when I went outside to attack the nest in case I got seriously stung so she could call 911 for me.  But I told her to be certain that if I got stung, no matter what happened, she should not ever come out that door if I had been attacked by the hornets. 

 I sprayed the nest from as closely as I felt safe in doing it and used nearly all the contents of both cans of wasp and hornet killer and thought that I had probably killed all the hornets.  This morning as soon as I got out of bed I went to check the nest and did not see any hornets at that time.  But this afternoon when I was considering tearing the nest off the side of the house, I saw a couple of hornets flying into the nest which means that all are not dead and tearing it off the house is a really bad idea.  I will go to the store again tomorrow, since we have commitments today, and buy more spray to finish the job of killing all the hornets.  If these hornets had built a nest in a tree somewhere near the boundary of our property, I doubt that I would have bothered to kill them unless the location presented a danger to me when I was doing yard work. Hornets, like all forms of wildlife, do have a niche in the environment in which they provide a necessary service to the entire ecosystem.  If they are in a nonthreatening location, it is not necessary to kill hornets or most other forms of wildlife, even if they are venomous insects or snakes, or apex predators.  I hope I never again have a hornet nest on my house.  

 

I have to add this update to my post since I went out this morning, September 8, 2024, under the assumption that all the hornets were dead, and intended to tear the nest down, throw it away, and clean the clinging residue off the soffit and fascia.  I got a stepladder and flat bladed grass edging tool and began tearing the well sprayed nest off the house.  Not long after, I saw a hornet fly away from an open area in the now well damaged nest.  I soon realized that I still had at least a dozen live hornets and a large amount of larvae in the nest.  I was also out of wasp and hornet spray so I went to my local Dollar General to get more to finish the job on the remaining hornets.  That store was out of the spray I needed so I traveled a few miles more to the Dollar General in Salyersville, Kentucky, and bought the "economy" two pack of spray and returned to spray the remains of the nest and the chunk of larval cells which had come out of the nest intact.  But I did take more photographs so those of you who actually read this post can see just how much larvae was in the nest.  I had also had to stomp and kill several, 8 or 10, damaged but living hornets which had survived the initial spraying and fell to the concrete back entrance. Also, while I was checking out at Dollar General this morning, the clerk asked me, "How are you today?" to which I replied "If I can finally finish killing these hornets, I'll be fine."  A women nearby heard us and walked up with her cell phone in hand to say, "Let me  show you what I found at my house a few days ago."  She had a photograph of a large, but smaller than mine, hornets nest laying the grass about 8 inches high.  She said,"I burned this one out." to  which I replied, "I don't want to burn my house down."  She also said that she had found that nest on her property just as it looked in the photograph, live and working  on the ground in the grass which is highly unusual for hornets. They prefer to be in high, sheltered locations, elevated well above the ground.  I think this nest on the ground  a few miles from my house further supports my statement at the beginning of this post that hornets are everywhere this year.  

One more short addendum is necessary to this post.  When I tore down the remains of the nest with the larval cells, I sprayed the larval cells heavily with wasp and hornet killer and left them on the ground overnight to completely die.  When I went out yesterday, September 9, 2024, in the morning to check what was left of the nest, the larval cells were gone and I realized that something had either eaten them, wasp and hornet spray and all, or had dragged them off to eat them somewhere else.  I looked around and found them several feet away with all the larvae and their cells gone.  All that remained was the empty cells in the photograph which surrounded the cells which had larvae in them.  I assume the possibly doomed culprit which ate the larvae, poison and all, was probably a skunk, opossum, raccoon, or fox since we have all those species in the immediate area and see some of them from time to time on the property.  I hope whatever ate those larvae can survive the wasp and hornet spray.