Saturday I was walking around the corner of the house and spotted a hornets nest that was about the size of a gallon milk jug. There were several bees swarming around it, so I thought I had better back away from it for the day. I know from experience that the best time to kill hornets is after dark.

The wife, daughter, and I got in the car to go pick up a few things from the store. A brand new can of Raid Hornet spray was at the top of my list. At $5 a can the stuff definitely isn’t cheap, but it kills the little bastards on contact.

The hole was in the side of the nest, and I knew that all I had to do was spray the Raid into the hole. The bees would not be able to escape, and I would have very little risk of getting stung. So, I waited until dark, and then the massacre began. I used the whole can on the nest, and not a single bee escaped out of the hole.

Sunday morning I went out to examine the fallout. (I should have took some pics of the nest before I tore it down, but I forgot. )

Here is about half of the nest laying on the ground after I ripped it from the eve:(click photos to enlarge)

A little closer:

Here is part of the comb. You can see one of the little bastards getting ready to emerge (off center to the right:)

One more photo of what they died trying to protect:

I dug around in the mess looking for the queen, the whole time thinking that she would be about twice the size of the other hornets. I never did find any one single bee that was considerably larger than the rest of them. I don’t know if I just overlooked her, or if she somehow managed to escape. I wasn’t very thorough in my search, so it’s very likely I just missed her. There is something about poking around in a pile of 100 or so bees that gives me the willies, no matter if they are dead or not.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 6:53 am and is filed under Home Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.