Removing a Hornets Nest

In Pests

Removing a Hornets Nest:
Over the past 10 years PEST UK has been seeing an ever increasing amount of Hornets. They do best in ‘poor’ wasp years, these are years that for whatever reasons the number of wasp nests have been low. It may be that they prefer different conditions but must probably is that they are competing for the same foods and living spaces. Although much larger than wasps and individually a wasp is no match for a hornet their nests contain only several hundred where as wasp nests may contain several thousand. The life cycle of both wasps and hornets are nearly identical. Although Hornet nests can contain several hundred hornets in reality it may be much less. I have found nests in late Summer that only had about 10 hornets in. I believe that if the nest struggles they may act as do some Bumble Bee species in the arctic, they either don’t produce workers but go straight on to produce queens and drones or produce fewer workers before producing the queens and drones. Treating or Removing a Hornets Nest: We do not need to remove the Hornet’s nest, in fact if done too quickly removing the nest can cause the hornets to attempt to re locate and/or start to build a new nest.

A PEST UK Hornet call outs peak in the Autumn. The reason for this is light. Although this is also apparent with wasps it seems more so with hornets that they are attracted to artificial light, especially when the days start drawing in. Often the first indication a house holder will have of a hornets nest is when they find them buzzing around lights. Locating a hornets nest can be difficult if the number of hornets in the nest is small. A nest with a low number in will produce a lot less ‘traffic’ (the movement of hornets into & leaving the nest). Looking at traffic of a wasp or hornets nest may be the only way to locate a nest if the nest cannot be seen, if it was built in a place like in a cavity wall or boxed off area.