This is amazing to watch.
There seems like there are way too many wasps considering the size of the nest. It’a also amazing to watch them desperately stinging the camera trying to survive this invasion. As the video goes on you can see the venom collecting on the lens. —->
As a White Anglo Saxon Protestant I cannot bear to watch this…
Wow! Just watched the whole thing.
If that were me I would hope that urine could be washed out of that protective suit.
That dude has the patience of Job…
I would have parked my car further away than that!
I always pour gasoline in the hole and don’t bother digging it up, but I don’t have a bee suit either. That was interesting to watch. I hit yellow jacket (which are a type of wasp) nests about every year trimming hedges and such around the yard. A few ounces of gasoline kills the nest off quickly if it’s somewhere you don’t have to worry about a flame being near (gas is a lot cheaper than wasp spray too).
Trade that damn hand rake for this little beast and TCB f.a.s.t.
http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/19/49-state-legal-personal-flamethrower/
Oh bother! I had to mute the audio on that sucker.
I’ll not be able to get to sleep, as it is. 🙁
How would you like to be out in the wild and accidentally step on a big nest like that. Probably never make it home.
Be a good vacation spot for Barry and Mooch.
Reminds me of a similar story. Back in the day I had a friend that use to pull green chain for Michigan Cal lumber in the Sierras. One day they nocked over an old dead fur tree and at the base of the root ball was a big ass nest of Rattlers. After pondering the situation they decided to dynamite it. He told me for the next week they had blown in half pissed off snakes falling out of the trees on them.
That was pretty interesting, but why was he doing that? I’d like to know more about it.
This is a video of me digging an invasive German wasp (Vespula germanica) nest for my research on biological control wasps at Landcare Research in NZ. I’m not removing the nest to kill it. I need to keep the nest alive for my survey for parasites (like mites, fungus, etc.). Some nests will be re-housed into nest boxes for use in behaviour assays.
I have many years of experience and use specialized equipment to do this and still get the odd sting, so please don’t try to dig an active nest yourself! As you can see from the copious amount of venom on the camera lens, these wasps meant business.
If you would like to contact me about my research, I can be reached at: brownb@landcareresearch.co.nz
@Joe6Pak, on youtube he says he is a researcher and they are an invasive species he is studying for parasites, etc. He is keeping them alive and re-housing them. 🙂
Sorry BFH, you beat me to it. 🙂
Ok that’s gonna give me nightmares!
I never knew they actually built a nest underground. I guess I figured they made tunnels. That was worth watching.
Joe – The underground nests are pretty similar to the honeycombs that bees build (the same 6-sided geometric patterned “cells” as a “red wasp” nest that is much smaller and is generally exposed to some extent. Years ago I had a neighbor that pulled up a dead bush and tore the top off of a live nest. The husband was allergic and nearly died from the stings – the wife wasn’t allergic but got enough stings to be a serious problem.
I learned early in life that stinging insects have no sense of humor.
My grandmother once ran over a yellow jacket nest with a lawnmower; some of the critters went up her dress. That was the end of Happy Friday nights for grandpa.
This is how to take out yellow jacket nests with the lawn mower. Just rev it up and park it over the hole in the ground for about 10 minutes. The noise and vibration agitates them, so they fly out. The blade makes a bee puree, so be prepared to hose it out after you are done.
A garden hose works well also. Just jam it in the hole and turn the water on.
I had one nest under my patio that was positioned in a way that water wouldn’t work. I assumed the nest was in an air pocket. Adapted a propane regulator and hose from my grill and jammed it in the hole. The gas probably was sufficient to kill them but by inner 14 year old got the best of me, so I ignited the gas that was trapped inside the hole. Whoops! Now my patio has a large crack right down the middle of it….
I had a big nest of yellow jackets in the ground underneath a bush by the sidewalk. You couldn’t walk past it without getting tagged by the guards. I figured I could put wasp spray on it at night to kill them. I got some clear plastic drop cloth and wrapped it up to keep the ones that got out contained and started to hose it with a can of spray. All it did was piss ’em off. You could hear the whole hive humming underneath that bush like a generator. Great! Now what am I going to do. Since it was right beside the house I wasn’t going to resort to fire, so I got a can a lacquer thinner out and poured about half of it in there, on the bush and everything. After about 10 seconds and the “generator” stopped. I left it like that until morning. I figured it would kill the bush, but at least I’d get the little devils. The surprising thing is that it never harmed the bush one bit and the yellow jackets never returned. That was about seven years ago.
Jethro – Nana had a push mower way back then. I remember using it as a kid before my Dad bought a power mower. They worked well as long as the grass wasn’t too high.
We have paper wasps build nests on our porch right up against the brick wall where it joins the ceiling. Put their nests inside the light fixtures too. Also some smallish bees (like little yellow jackets) made nests in my railroad tie retaining walls in the backyard. Would sting me even if I got close to them.
Propane bombs … now there’s a thought! lol
I would take the nest to one of those BLM Interstate shutdown protests and shared Mother Nature with the jerks.
Hopefully the way the hornets swarmed the camera is the way Republican voters will swarm the GOPe!
I say blast off and nuke the site from orbit! It’s the only way to be sure!
I get Yellowjackets every August (or late July if it’s dry enough). They get the gasoline treatment after dark. Usually a skunk, coon, or possum (I’ve never seen what it actually is) comes along and digs up the remains to get to the juicy, baked grubs. There are very few creatures I think the world could do without: Yellowjackets are one of them.
As a young boy running through the woods, I stepped on a yellow jacket nest and sunk into the ground halfway to my knee. I ran as fast as I could and they followed me home (about 1/2 mile) stinging all the way. I still have the scars from so many stings.
These days, when I find such a nest, I scatter concrete mix over it and spray with the hose. Bit by bit over 25 years, I’ve nearly paved the alley behind the house.
Usually yellowjackets are so aggressive that they will attack anything that gets within three feet of their nest, especially if it creates a lot of noise and vibration (like a lawnmower), and I have been painfully stung many times. However, one summer I was using an electric hedge trimmer to trim a large bush in my back yard. I worked on it for quite some time and was just doing a few finishing up touches when I happened to look through a small opening I had created, and there in the center of the hole, not even two feet from my unprotected face, was a yellowjacket nest the size of my hand. There had to have been at least 50 or 75 yellowjackets on the nest, not moving, wings folded, but every one of them pointed toward and staring directly at, me! I slowly backed away, and my first instinct was to get the hornet spray, but then I thought: By God, if they could have the self-control not to attack me, when they could easily have turned my head into a throbbing mass of swollen flesh, then I would have the self-control not to kill them in return. The bush was in an area of the yard where people rarely went, so it’s not like the nest presented any danger to anyone, and I left it alone. At the end of the year, the yellowjackets had gone away, as they always do. The paper nest had served its function, and I removed it by hand.
Whenever possible, I try to live and let live.
🙂