I took out two hornet nests attached to my house over the past few days. They were little itty bitty ones with only a few dozen of the flying 'I can sting you as many times as I want' yellow jackets. What do they do anyway? Bees help pollinate and make honey. I like that, but what do Wasps and Hornets do for me?
The task went well this time. Because the nests were small, softball sized, they just took a 60 second shot of water from the hose each. If you get the hole at the bottom, the little buggers can't get out and you drown them all before the nest gets so water-logged it plops to the ground. Then you can ground spray it into Oblivion.
The only thing you have to be concerned about are the wasps who aren't home at the time of your assault, and come back to find you spraying the bejesus out of their old homestead. They tend to get pissed off about that and hopefully you're done and can run!
I made the mistake of forgetting about this a few years ago on a much larger nest at my old place and ran like a fool, aImost taking out my fence in the process. I came up with a plan involving a cinder block, duct tape, and a bungie cord. I let everything calm down, mounted a cinder block about 10 feet from the nest, aimed the hose nozzel at it and duct taped it into position on the block. Then with the water shut off the trigger was wrapped with a bungie cord but not before I tooth-picked a stick in there to keep the bungie from closing the trigger. I rigged a line to the trigger, pulled the stick out and WHAMMO! Missed the nest by a foot. I shut the water off and re-aimed. It was at this point I realized the bungie trigger was moot because I could lock the trigger open and just turn on the hose(doh! Oh well, it was fun to build!).
From the safety of my side yard, I unleashed hell (or Atlantis) on the hive of pestilence and watched as 3 of the buggers followed the hose spray right to the nozzel and landed on the back of it! Wow, they put two and two together! Smart! As it turns out, that's where the gifted program for insects ended because they didn't follow the hose to me as their little wasp pad dropped to the deck scattering larvae and dead Wasps everywhere.
Oh the humanity!
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