Bald face hornets

[Harry]

I have a large burn pile that I wanted to bury in a large hole. Its made up mostly of old tree stumps that didn’t burn up after many years of burning brush. I dug a big hole today with the 644 lbh then started digging into the burn pile with the loader and moved three bucket loads into the hole. Going back to get the fourth bucket load and saw these black and white hornets all over the pile. That was time to retreat in a hurry to prevent getting stung. I’m hoping a skunk destroys to nest to eat all the larvae as I’ve seen before. If not I’ll have wait for winter. Harry

[JSinMO]

Glad you got away @Harry. I don’t like dealing with hornets at all. that definitely a project that can wait for cold weather!

[Toolslinger]

It's been a bad year for hornets by me... I'm 4 nests in now. Usually I find 1 a year or so, without getting hit, but not this year.
Glad you escaped their wrath after the disturbance.

[Harry]

Tonight right before dusk I moved sone more of the burn pile into the pit. I made two bucket full of debris before I seen some hornet activity. I then would switch and move some clay and rock fill from the spoils pike of the sepic job last summer. Go back to the burn pike after the hornets settled down and move some more from the opposite side of the pike where I seen the activity. I’ll just keep picking away at the burn pile and see how it goes. Harry

[Harry]

Raining heavy today so I thought it would be a good day to clean the shop and get into some mischief. While in the shop I came up with the idea to put on rain gear and attack the hornet nest. I went out with a hoe and it was raining a little. So I hoed a bit around the pile and hornets came out and were flying low to the pile. So I backed off to observe. The hornet activity slowed down and the rain picked up. I went back into the pile and moved a lot of the debris until the nest was uncovered. Hornets crawling all around and it was a down pour in rain. Hornet activity died down so I hoed around the pile looking for more nests but found none. I’ll take a look in a few days. Hopefully I can clean this mess up and move on to the next outdoor project. Harry

[RoamingGnome]

Wow... talk about stirring up a hornets nest
I am curious though, why not spraying it down with some wasp/hornet killer?
Used to keep a case of that stuff on the service truck - too many out of reach places on an excavator for them to build a nest.

[Harry]

I came into the house to eat breakfast and told the wife about the hornet nest. That got into a discussion on are they really hornets. Immediately she gets on her phone to look up hornets and prove me wrong. A daily activity of hers. Hornets don’t nest usually in the ground so it’s a bee. I thought a mining bees was the closest to the way the pic look. They are in the UK so it’s some kind of ground bee not a hornet at all. Success for the proven me wrong again. I think it’s time to go to shop and enjoy my own company while I work on a GT. Harry PS: I could really care less what they are I just want them gone and don’t want to get stung.

[Eugen]

[RoamingGnome]

We do have miner bees in Ontario -
They were nesting in the dirt floor of my tent garage this spring - typically one bee per hole, kinda looked like an oversized worm hole on the ground. Stood there and watched them flying around for a while and then saw them disappear into their tunnels - chased them out by soaking the ground with a vinegar - water mixture (they don't like vinegar and prefer dry ground for tunnelling)

[Harry]

I walked back to the burn pile after dinner. There still were a few bees in the nest and crawling around the pile. The weirdest thing was yellow jackets were attacking the nest and attacking the other bees. Harry