"RoseGarden" - - - - - - - from - nscave

Had to fight some hornets this week. There was an old half folded up mat on the back corner of our deck that no one had paid attention to - except for a few hundred hornets. Suddenly realizing that every time you sit down on the deck you are surrounded by twenty or so of these little critters, it was time to track them down.

They find you a lot easier than you find them. After searching under the deck and watching as they moved about it was discovered they had taken up residence in the folded up mat. The question of how to get them out of there was solved by attaching a clamp to the mat, with an appropriate length (about 15 feet) of heavy string fastened to the clamp, with which to tow said mat rapidly to the centre of the back lawn.

That part completed successfully, a little prodding with the broom handle opened the mat to reveal a rather large hornet dwelling, sort of honey comb shaped like bees would do, about eight inches in diameter and several inches thick. A high pressure water hose dispersed them to parts unknown, although they weren't very happy.

The following day the hornets decide to reconstruct their home in a folded up BBQ cover in almost the same location where the mat was formerly. "Busy as bees", they were making numerous constructive trips back and forth.  Using the same clamp-string-speedy extraction procedure just in case, the BBQ cover was moved to centre stage, er lawn as the mat. Not to worry, the little bug-ers hadn't had time to get their new apartment complex under way.

Now we are on day 3, and I notice the population of hornets had not decreased much. They seemed just as busy as before. Their newest selection for accommodation was in the metal leg of a swing set on our deck. The plastic foot on one of the swing set legs had a crack in it, with a hole small enough that the hornets could buzz in and out, and they were by the dozens.

  Now the battle is becoming serious. How do I get them out of that metal leg which is like a pipe with no access except for that little crack in the plastic foot. The best I could do was get an ordinary can of Raid which was almost empty and hit that little hole the best I can. The Raid can says it is for ants, suppose it works on hornets or will they thrive on it?

Sometime later while shopping, there it is in the centre display - lots of it. Raid Wasp & Hornet Killer. Well that's for me I thought. Turns out that stuff is almost $9.00 a can.

It's good though. I took that stuff home, and never even broke the seal. Haven't used it yet. But there hasn't been a hornet around since. They must have recognized the blue can. Too bad. I really did want to see if that sucker would shoot eight feet.

-=One Day At A Time=-

This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License