Hornets and wasps are very "ambiguous" neighbors of man. On the one hand, by their presence in the country, they prevent its owner from relaxing, forcing him to constantly be on the alert because of the possibility of getting a bite. On the other hand, being natural predators, they are capable of destroying harmful agricultural insects in significant quantities.
So, the inhabitants of just one nest of hornets daily bring up to several hundred different caterpillars, bugs and butterflies into their homes, thereby helping gardeners and gardeners to fight for the harvest. Therefore, before getting rid of hornets or wasps, you should make sure that there is no possibility of peaceful coexistence with them on the site.
However, there are times when the need to get rid of the hornet's nest arises, as they say, here and now. If, for example, the dwelling of these insects appeared not far from the apiary, then they will definitely hunt bees, and when the family grows, they will actively destroy their hives.
It is logical that beekeepers are unlikely to put up with this state of affairs and, as a result, they will begin to actively exterminate predators, protecting bee hives.
At the same time, knowing what the hornets are afraid of, it is not so difficult to destroy them.
On a note
Hornet or wasp? For many inhabitants, it is a problem to distinguish these two insects from each other. In fact, it is quite simple: the wasp has a body length of about 1-1.5 cm, while the common hornet is up to 3 cm. In addition, the hornet has a characteristic brown spot on the back and at the base of the abdomen, and the paper wasp has no brown color in color.
Despite all the advantages of destroying harmful insects, hornets in the country can also have a significant disadvantage - their proximity poses a serious threat to the health of children and adults. One or two large wasps that accidentally flew into the site are not yet so dangerous, but a family that has settled for permanent residence can cause serious consequences.
In the case of an attack on a person by ordinary wasps, serious lesions are observed only occasionally, their bites are simply painful. If a hornet is taken for a "case", then the consequences of meeting with him can be really terrible.
Why are hornets and wasps dangerous?
So, why is a hornet dangerous for a person? First of all, the fact that his bite often causes an acute allergic reaction. In the vast majority of manifestations, it is limited only to serious inflammation and swelling at the site of the bite, but in about 10-15% of cases, stinging causes severe poisoning of the body, accompanied by headaches, heart palpitations and numerous hemorrhages.
Such symptoms are usually characteristic of people who have an increased sensitivity to insect bites.However, in nature there are also such types of hornets, meetings with which lead to dire consequences even for seemingly non-allergic people before.
If the hornet stings in the chest and neck area, the victim may develop swelling of the bronchi or lungs, which is fraught with suffocation. Sometimes an allergic reaction that occurs flows into anaphylactic shock, in which a person can simply die without urgent medical care. And, finally, in the case when a person is bitten by several hornets at once, deaths are recorded as a result of kidney failure and necrosis of internal organs.
On a note
In Japan, about 40 people die every year after being bitten by local giant hornets. Approximately the same number of victims end up in intensive care with swelling of the internal organs after a single attack by several insects. The situation is similar in China and Thailand, because local hornets are among the largest and most dangerous among all representatives of their kind.
Speaking about the most severe consequences after hornet stings, one cannot but say about wasps. The bites of these insects, of course, are less dangerous, but they, in turn, can lead to serious poisoning if a person has an acute allergic reaction to their poison.
Obviously, if at least one family member is known to be sensitive to insect bites, it is worth getting rid of hornets or wasps when they appear in the country as soon as possible.
In the video below - hornets in the country when placing their nest:
Interesting video: hornets build a nest
We note right away that it is necessary to get rid of the hornet nest very carefully (more on this will be discussed below).
Destruction of wasps in an apartment and house: a few simple tips
Hornets in the house most often appear due to the attraction of a sweet smell. Having flown into the dwelling of a person, they can no longer find a way out. It is dangerous to drive a hornet or wasp around the apartment with a broom or a folded newspaper - an angry insect can sting.
In this case, how to drive a hornet or a wasp out of the house? It turns out it's not that difficult.
The easiest way to catch an intruder is to use a half-liter glass jar for this, and to be more specific, simply cover the insect with it. When a wasp or hornet starts flying around the jar, the makeshift trap must be torn off the wall or window and covered with a plastic lid.
A similar trap for wasps and hornets is “made” from a matchbox. If the house has very thick construction or leather gloves, then they can be used - even a hornet will not be able to pierce such a thick fabric with a sting.
If none of the devices described above are at hand, and the presence of an insect in the house is very annoying, then you can also use a newspaper sheet folded several times to catch.
After catching the insect, you should not kill it, you just need to throw it out the window.
How to Destroy a Wasp or Hornet Nest
If hornets in a country house or apiary become very frequent guests, this means only one thing - their nest is located somewhere nearby. The discovery of such a dwelling is the first step to victory over insects.
As a rule, all wasps prefer to place their nests in quiet places - closed sheds, attics, in tree branches, under canopies. If the nest hangs open, there are several ways to destroy it. Let's take a closer look at the algorithm of the necessary actions.
- Option for the room: draw two-thirds of a bucket of water, raise it to the required level and lower the nest inside. After such manipulations, all the hornets will be in the water and, accordingly, will die. For reliability, the bucket can be pressed against the ceiling and supported from below with a wooden plank or stepladder.
- Cover the nest with a plastic bag, after spraying more insecticide there - Dichlorvos, Raptor, Executioner, Tetrix, Aktara or others. Hornets are afraid of all those means that poison bed bugs and cockroaches. If the nest is located on a wall or ceiling, you need to glue the edges of the package to them. If a hornet or wasp hung a nest on a branch, the package should simply be tied over it in a tight knot.
- The most cruel, but no less effective method: to collect gasoline or kerosene in a spray bottle, spray the nest several times from different sides and set it on fire.
It is worth paying special attention to the fact that the latter method requires compliance with strict fire safety measures. In no case should it be used indoors, but even if the hornets are sitting on a pear or any other valuable tree, it is necessary to spray a combustible agent strictly on the nest so that when set on fire, it does not catch fire and burn the tree.
It is more difficult to drive the hornets out of a birch or other tree in the hollow of which they made a nest.
In this case, a concentrated insecticidal agent such as Karbofos or Hangman is poured into the hole, after which the entrance to it is carefully smeared with putty or sealed with adhesive tape.
And finally, the easiest way to deal with wasps that have settled in an earthen hole.In this case, 3-4 liters of boiling water is poured into the hole and the hole is covered with a stone.
Safety regulations
All procedures for the destruction of wasp and hornet nests must be carried out at night, when insects are the least active and are in or near the nest. But even in this case, it is worthwhile to strictly observe the elementary safety rules in order to ultimately remain safe and sound.
To get rid of the hornets, you should wear a beekeeper mask that covers the entire face and neck, long sleeves and gloves. Thus, the main principle in choosing clothes for such a purpose is the complete absence of open areas of the body.
Raising the issue of safety, it is also worth saying that treating the nest with smoke or special stains to reduce insect activity cannot be a panacea for getting rid of wasps. The thing is that it is impossible to know for sure how a hornet or wasp will behave when smoked, which means that this method of getting rid of is fraught with an attack by insects.
Based on the foregoing, the key to efficiency in the destruction of unwanted winged neighbors will be pre-thought-out actions and the high speed of this procedure.
Traps from wasps and hornets as a preventive measure
If wasps or hornets do not yet live in the country, but fly into the area for the purpose of reconnaissance, they can be caught with special traps. The easiest way to prevent the justification of these insects in the garden is by catching their first individual individuals penetrating the site.
A trap for wasps and hornets is made from an ordinary plastic bottle, which is first cut in the middle. Then its upper half with the unscrewed lid is turned over and inserted into the lower part.After these simple actions, the trap is filled with a mixture of beer and honey, and the insects attracted by such a “flavor” can no longer get out of the funnel.
You can hang traps on the site from about the middle of spring, when the first scouts begin to fly. In general, the use of these special devices is only advisable when the wasp nest is located far from the site, because it will still not work to catch all family members with their help.
Thus, traps are a great way to capture individual insects. Even if with their help it is not possible to get rid of a large wasp family, they will perfectly protect your site from a theoretically possible unwanted neighborhood.
If the insects still stung: first aid
Despite all the protective measures, sometimes hornets still sting. If this happens, you should do the following:
- apply a cold compress or soaked sugar to the bite site - this will prevent the poison from quickly spreading through the tissues;
- take Diphenhydramine or Suprastin (to reduce the severity of an allergic reaction);
- wash the wound with alcohol or hydrogen peroxide (for disinfection);
- drink a liter of water and drink as much as possible in the future (to reduce the concentration of toxins in the blood and accelerate their excretion in the urine).
If, after the bite, alarming symptoms began to appear - pain in the head, palpitations, shortness of breath, Quincke's edema - you should immediately call an ambulance. Delay in this case is fraught with loss of consciousness and even death.
Above, we talked about how to get rid of hornets and wasps if they settled in the country. If the nest is seen in the wild, it should be carefully bypassed and left alone.
These insects, however, like everyone else, are very necessary for natural biocenoses, they occupy their strictly defined niche, and therefore it is by no means possible to destroy them without a reason.
An effective wasp trap from improvised means
Protecting bees from hornets and wasps with simple traps
What niche do they occupy? It's all bullshit and rubbish. There are no cockroaches, no ants, no flies in my house, and no biological balance is disturbed in the slightest. And even very excellent. Let this rubbish be destroyed all over the earth.
In August 2016, hornets settled in my garage. And unexpectedly. The ceiling is hemmed with a board, where the nest is - it's hard to say, you have to disassemble the ceiling. I tried it in the evening, when I came home from work, I turned on the ultrasound for them. Somehow I bought, just in case, a device in the store. And so he helped me.A day later, in the morning, I came to the garage to go to work, and saw that adults hovered over the gate at the top of the garage. Opened the gate, they were not inside. I arrived in the evening and found only young animals in the garage. The next day they were all gone. The device, of course, is still working, I want to fix the result. But while these “striped flies” lived with me, they completely ate all the bark beetles, so I also benefited from the hornets ... I wish you all good luck, get these reptiles out!
Thanks for the advice! Wound up in the roof, on the second floor... Don't get close 🙁 The floor of the roof needs to be dismantled. Sleep is impossible. Now we turned on the device, we hope that it will work.
Thanks for the advice. Bitten by an Asian hornet: horror, pain, allergies. Your advice helped.
Sorry. I can't stand these bastards myself, how they piss me off.
Reptiles bred in an abandoned hive. My father and I put a third of a balloon of Teren 4M peppercorns in there - no one came out. Tomorrow we will fix the effect with dichlorvos.