"He investigated a nest near Pineapple, measuring about 5 feet by 4 feet, that was coming out of the ground on a roadside. A southwest Pike County house in Goshen had a giant nest spreading into its roof."
4x5 feet. Good god.
These huge nests - say they're in an isolated area. How might the hornets respond to some fire?
Yellow jackets have been prolific here in PA too. I've destroyed an underground nest, there's one under the eve of the roof where the power lines hook up, and I had a bit of fun with a nest about the size of a football, which was hanging from a bush. I just whacked it down with a long pipe. They were fairly pissed. By the next day, they had a softball-sized nest on the branch already. I tried some of Raid's Earth Options brand, an "environmentally friendly" insecticide. Apparently it's also "yellow-jacket friendly" as they were simply annoyed by it, but none seemed to die, even after two sprayings. Ortho Hornet Killer 4 did the trick nicely. The nest was quiet very quickly.
But it's really the underground ones that I don't like - push mower + hornet nest = big big fun. The mower pisses them off, and they all fly out en masse just as I'm walking past.
Good way of killing an underground nest: a clear glass bowl. At night, once they're all in the nest sleeping, put a glass bowl upside-down over the nest, and make sure it's pressed down good. The bees will see light, and thus not realize that they're trapped - if they decide that they are trapped, like if the entrance was covered with a rock, they'd dig another way out. With the bowl, they don't do that, so the whole nest just starves to death.
And you can all be glad that there aren't
Asian giant hornets around here. Up to 1.8" long.
Pics.
Lovely critters
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