They aren't all bad!

by Grammadot
(Barto, PA)

High Hornet House 2007

A few years ago hornets were making a biiiiiiiigggggggg nest over my strawberry patch.They are mean, territorial and pack a punch! How would I be able to pick my berries??? Mulled over methods overnight. Shoot water from the hose in the dark? ha! As a kid I watched my dad burn them with a corn cob torch, after covering up all skin and warning everyone to stay inside. Decided all ideas would end in pain! Next day just happened to be there when the bluejays swooped down and gobbled up all my problems! Honest!

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They aren't all bad!

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Thanks, Ferne
by: Nori

I could never figure out the difference, so you've cleared up one of those life puzzles for me!
Baking soda is one of the two remedies we used for stings, and good old mud is the other. The mud actually stays on better than a paste made of baking soda, and seems to stay cold longer, which is probably the soothing factor. But yeah, not a lot of fun getting multiple stings.
I've also "known" some nests of uninterested wasps/hornets; I wonder what makes some so agressive and others not. I've had to outrun a few of them in my time.
Thanks again.

Regarding Hornets or Wasps?
by: Ferne, Kamloops, B.C.

Hi Nori

My understanding is that there isn't any scientific difference between hornets and wasps. But there sure is a difference in how each individual species of these little guys behaves.

Your story of being stung multiple times is one I once witnessed a child suffer through. She had gone into the middle of a blackberry patch to pick herself some berries and came screaming towards the house with a stream of hornets/wasps behind her. We put her into a bath of baking soda....but it must have hurt like the devil and there wasn't much we could do.

The ground living wasps/hornets I had in a busy part of my garden last summer were very gentle and would buzz around me just an inch or two away from my face at times but never sting, even though I was often weeding or planting quite near their ground entrance.

These sort of critters really are one of our best good guys in the garden and I would have to be at dire risk before I would consider killing any of them. And I would do that in the least chemical way I could and make sure that I was getting the
"guilty culprit" before I took action. Hasn't come to that in a lot of years and hopefully won't in the future.

hornets or wasps?
by: Nori

Is that a hornets' nest or a wasps' nest? It looks like a wasp nest to me, but I can't think what a hornets nest looks like. I kind of remember hornets nesting on the ground, and in rotting stumps. (When I was a kid, I once sat down on a big rotting birch log that turned out to be the site of a hornets' nest, and received 11 stings on my arms and legs as I was running away.) The big constructions hanging from under the eaves of houses or tree branches are usually built by paper wasps.
There are several small birds that utilize bits of the "paper" from the old wasps' nests in building their own nests, too.

The MIddle Guys
by: Ferne, B.C., Canada

Nature balancing....when we let it. Some hornets are aggressive towards intruders, others are not. I have dealt with both. Probably the only time I set out reluctantly to spray...The aggressive ones built in our house foundation right beside the porch!...Sent hubby to the local hardware to pick up a bottle of whatever was recommended and sprayed via a long narrow tube during the evening, into the entrance hole...No more black & white PAINFUL assaults. Only after all three of us had been stung, mind you...I got a fair reaction to these particular guys too...

These days I'm a little smarter, and in another locale, where I garden non-stop from spring until late fall, so I keep a anti-histamine in the bathroom cabinet and use the full recommended dose as soon as I am bitten...MUCH less painful and less worry too. Although I have since only been bitten 3 times and they were all a case of my putting a hand or foot directly on one. This, despite the fact that I had a nest in the ground right in an active part of my garden last year. This year I can now see an abandoned one in a tree nearby. I wonder where they will build next year?

Lots of birds will help to keep things from getting too populated. Those little hornets, wasps, etc. that I do have will eat plenty of aphids, beetles et al.

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