OT - Bald Faced Hornets

I have a tuck under garage/basement. Turned the lights on the other day and went down there (didn't open the garage door), went up stairs and came back downstairs to hornets buzzing the lights. These are the big boys and I've confirmed that these are bald faced hornets which are safe until you threaten their nest and then they are killers - they will swarm and attack en-mass.

I haven't been able to figure out where the nest is. I 'think' it may be down one of the cinder block holes at the top of the wall where the first floor floor-joists sit. I was going away for this last long weekend so I hung a strong bug zapper in the garage after cutting away a lot of the protective outside grill so these big boys could get to the light. I came home to maybe 50 dead ones. Doesn't seem to draw them in as well as I had hoped.

Looking forward to your ideas. Thanks.

I see them going to several places between the floor joists at the top of the cinder block wall. I'm thinking of bundling up and stuffing fiberglass insulation down those holes. I might hit that stuff with hornet spray before stuffing it in. But spectracide spray has little affect on these hearty beasts.

Local exterminating companies beg off once they find out the nest is probably inside the house. Anyone else have any other ideas how to find or kill these thing? I need to be able to use my washing machine and it is just below this area.

I have often wondered about the TV show "Pickers"
How do they not come up on a hornets nest or wasp nest or meet a snake eye to eye?

if its in the garage, drive the car in there with a couple cans of your trusty hornet and wasp spray and hose em down. when you stir them up, you can see where the nest is. and roll the window up when they get to flying.

Try a bug zapper. I had a bee hive under the house and put a bug zapper on 24/7. Took about 4 days before I didn't hear anymore frying.

They did find a huge wasp next in the side storage compartment of a scooter one time. In that case the farmer reached in with his bare hand and removed it for them, wasps and all.

Preacher swears by a shop vac if you can find the nest/entry hole. Leave it set for a couple of hours. He tapes a small piece of paper inside the hose to simulate movement. Bees attack the paper and get sucked in.

Larry

Thats a tough one in that you cannot locate the nest, and deal with it directly. The attached video certainly shows these in full threat reaction mode, and it seems they pinpointed the camera as the threat, left their pheromone and continued with an unrelenting assault, it does show them at their worst. I have disturbed their nests at a distance but have noticed that if they do not find the threat, they calm fairly quickly and go back to normal, whereas like before they were disturbed, even if you stood in their flight path, they just go around you, but just bump that nest or make enough of a disturbance, they are out so fast it will make your head spin, if they mark you, (sting) you are in a world of shite !

They also leave a SENTRY out, so night and day, one or more is on watch, they will fly at night, as I recall from dealing with a nest years ago, from a vehicle.

The do seem to die off when the fall comes, though you may find a few left, its not like when the nest is full of them, plus being cold, the nest is usually no trouble to destroy.

Right now its a gamble, whatever you do, you must be sure that if you block them off, while doing so, you do not disturb that nest with vibration, impact etc, I am not sure if scent is an issue with these, except the pheromone, though it sounds like its possible if you duplicate what they give off;

"Hornets, like many social wasps, can mobilize the entire nest to sting in defense, which is highly dangerous to animals and humans. The attack pheromone is released in case of threat to the nest. In the case of the Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarina, this is also used to mobilize many workers at once when attacking colonies of their prey, honey bees.[7] Three biologically active chemicals, 2-pentanol, 3-methyl-1-butanol, and 1-methylbutyl 3-methylbutanoate, have been identified for this species. In field tests, 2-pentanol alone triggered mild alarm and defensive behavior, but adding the other two compounds increased aggressiveness in a synergistic effect.[7] In the European hornet, Vespa crabro, the major compound of the alarm pheromone is 2-methyl-3-butene-2-ol.[8]

If a hornet is killed near a nest it may release pheromone which can cause the other hornets to attack. Materials that come in contact with pheromone, such as clothes, skin, and dead prey or hornets, can also trigger an attack, as can certain food flavorings, such as banana and apple flavorings, and fragrances which contain C5 alcohols and C10 esters.[7]"

In your situation, you had best think it out, call someone who is prepared or something safe, the attached video certainly is no joke, just listen to their hard bodies hitting the camera on its microphone, that alone ought to instill some serious respect of these, you will get nailed hundreds of times in seconds no doubt.
White Face Hornet Attack

If you can see where they are going in and out, put a handful of Sevin dust around each of those places. They will track it in to the nest. Works good with yellowjackets etc.

Garry

once you got em stirred up good, back out of the garage and lead down the road away from your place!

(quoted from post at 18:45:25 09/04/13) once you got em stirred up good, back out of the garage and lead down the road away from your place!

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Ah yes, the Pied Piper approach

I'm not usually a fan of these things, but have you tried one of the bug bombs? You need to extinguish any pilot lights, etc. Set one or two of them off, maybe with the lights on so the hornets are already out. The bug light is also a good idea.

Earlier this summer, I called on an ad in the local paper. Later that week a guy came out with all the gear and sucked most of the hornets out of the nest. He puts them on dry ice and packs them up to ship to a lab in Spokane, WA. They use the venom for allergy research.

He makes a living at it and I don't get bit trying to get rid of them! Mine were the yellow faced variety, but he said the bald faces happened later in the season.

It's because the show is fake...unfortunate but true.

(quoted from post at 10:11:53 09/05/13) It's because the show is fake...unfortunate but true.

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So you're saying the piles of junk they dig through are fake too? The show is done on a budget. Seems to me that creating those piles would be a lot more costly than just going out and finding some real-life packrats who already have the piles of junk laying around.

Hey, that's a good idea. I'll have to see if there is anyone around here like that. My problem is that I haven't yet been able to identify the location of the nest. The bug light keeps getting a few every day but there is no obvious place that they are flying from or to. I still think it is somewhere in one of the holes along the top of that cinder block wall.