Queen Hornet in My Bedroom

exchemist

exchemist

Valued Senior Member
Got stung while getting ready for bed last night, by the largest insect I have ever seen, apart from stick insects in Brittany. It must have been waking up after hibernating somewhere in the house and I didn’t notice it when moving some clothes from the radiator beneath the window. It was about 4cm long and made an impressively low pitched buzz, like a taxi-ing WW2 bomber. Having sworn, I got a jar and trapped it, then released it into the street. So if we get a hornets’ nest in the street this summer everyone can blame me :) .

I regularly find groggy queen wasps in the house in springtime, but this is the first time I’ve encountered a queen hornet. What a monster! The queen of the European Hornet, which is what this was (I looked it up) is substantially bigger than the workers, which is what have occasionally seen before. I gather hornets actually eat wasps.

I’ll post a pic if I can find a way to make the file size small enough.

1776618636631.png

Anyway, one huge mother, as it were.
 
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exchemist said:
Got stung while getting ready for bed last night, by the largest insect I have ever seen, apart from stick insects in Brittany. It must have been waking up after hibernating somewhere in the house and I didn’t notice it when moving some clothes from the radiator beneath the window. It was about 4cm long and made an impressively low pitched buzz, like a taxi-ing WW2 bomber. Having sworn, I got a jar and trapped it, then released it into the street. So if we get a hornets’ nest in the street this summer everyone can blame me :) .

I regularly find groggy queen wasps in the house in springtime, but this is the first time I’ve encountered a queen hornet. What a monster! The queen of the European Hornet, which is what this was (I looked it up) is substantially bigger than the workers, which is what have occasionally seen before. I gather hornets actually eat wasps.

I’ll post a pic if I can find a way to make the file size small enough.

View attachment 7482

Anyway, one huge mother, as it were.
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Destroy it.
 
Hornets will also eat bees, especially in Spring, so they are more eco threat than help these days. A spray bottle with some soapy water will take care of any invaders. Surface tension normally prevents water droplets from clogging the spiracles; by reducing it, added detergent will allow water to enter spiracles and drown them. (This is how I wipe out paper wasp nests, when they build them inside structures)
 
TheVat said:
Hornets will also eat bees, especially in Spring, so they are more eco threat than help these days. A spray bottle with some soapy water will take care of any invaders. Surface tension normally prevents water droplets from clogging the spiracles; by reducing it, added detergent will allow water to enter spiracles and drown them. (This is how I wipe out paper wasp nests, when they build them inside structures)
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From what I read, European hornets don't eat that many bees and are not considered to be a threat to healthy bee colonies. In this respect they are not like the Asian hornet. And they do eat a lot of other problematic insects and their larvae. In Germany it is even forbidden by law to destroy hornet nests, apparently.

I must admit to being impressed with this rather magnificent creature and felt it would be a shame to destroy her. I'm not surprised she was cross. The sting by the way hurt for a couple of hours and swelled up a little bit, but the effects did not interfere with my sleep and were gone by morning. Not noticeably worse than a regular wasp sting.

I adopt a policy of live and let live with these things, so long as they don't build a nest where it interferes with my life. We had a wasps' nest in the hedge next to my garden table a couple of years ago which I had to destroy in the end. It was getting like Heathrow airport and they kept stopping off to pinch the stuff we were eating for lunch. They were quite partial to things like salami and would sit on the edge of a plate patiently sawing off pieces they could carry. It was amusing for a bit but became too much when they sent the message back to the nest. And of course it was impossible to prune the hedge. So that nest had to go.
 
exchemist said:
[...] I must admit to being impressed with this rather magnificent creature and felt it would be a shame to destroy her. [...] I adopt a policy of live and let live with these things, so long as they don't build a nest where it interferes with my life. We had a wasps' nest in the hedge next to my garden table a couple of years ago which I had to destroy in the end. [...]
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I've had an uneasy relationship with red wasps for years. They tend to leave me alone if I do the same, but inevitably there's some mishap or a novice insect that hasn't learned all the tenets of the truce yet.
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C C said:
I've had an uneasy relationship with red wasps for years. They tend to leave me alone if I do the same, but inevitably there's some mishap or a novice insect that hasn't learned all the tenets of the truce yet.
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I don't think we have those. What we have is mostly what I think Americans call yellow jackets. Of course there are thousands of other wasp types too, but they don't tend to cause any trouble to people.
 
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Randwolf said:
Over an inch and a half?


Indeed... :eek:
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Yes. Though it was trying to fly inside the jar. I've noticed before with things like bumble bees that they elongate their abdomens when they fly, presumably to get more air into the spiracles. So this thing might have been a bit shorter when resting on the ground. But a very impressive insect, right at the top of its food chain I would say.
 
exchemist said:
I don't think we have those. What we have is mostly what I think Americans call yellow jackets. Of course there are thousands of other wasp types too, but they don't tend to cause any trouble to people.
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In Jean Giraudoux's Campaigns and Intervals (page 260), he wrote something that got filed in my head for years, for some odd reason. In retrospect, it's apparent that he was surely just referring to the so-called "European or German wasp" being smaller. Which is indeed called a yellowjacket in North America.

Giraudoux: "Where am I? I am in a land which I instantly recognize to be enormous, because these wasps that are this second buzzing about my head are three times bigger than they are in Europe. I am in the middle of New Hampshire..."
_
 
C C said:
I've had an uneasy relationship with red wasps for years. They tend to leave me alone if I do the same, but inevitably there's some mishap or a novice insect that hasn't learned all the tenets of the truce yet.
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The Euro paper wasps we have are similar and quite non-aggressive. I've had one sting in 12 years. I've only soap-watered a nest when it turned into a Heathrow situation (as exchemist put it) and was inside a storage shed frequently used. We generally see them as beneficial, though I can't vouch for our tolerance if they started sawing off pieces of pepperoni from a pizza. The diet rule I've heard is protein in Spring, fruit in summer.
 
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TheVat said:
The Euro paper wasps we have are similar and quite non-aggressive. I've had one sting in 12 years. [...]
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Red wasps won't hesitate to sting the daylights of an interloper, but usually the latter triggers and exacerbates the situation by waving their hands around frantically and trying to swat the defenders.

One year they built a nest above the doorway of an outbuilding (lawn, garden stuff) that I entered a few times a week. Never got stung once. Of course, they became familiar with me from the very start back when they were originally building the nest.

There were red wasp incidents in the past where I avoided getting swarmed when everyone else got attacked. Because I just played it cool and didn't get crazily agitated, and maybe those too had become accustomed to me (i.e., The Wasp Woman or the Willamina or Willow of vespids instead of rats.) ;)
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And now, 2 days later, another queen, this time just a regular wasp, in the shower room:

1776681840539.png
Although bigger than a normal worker wasp, she seemed subjectively very small now, compared to the enormous queen hornet. I was able to open the window and flick her out with a card.

I am starting to wonder if it may have been the protracted wet weather in the winter that has made all these queens seek shelter indoors. I'll have to watch out for more of these, evidently. They used to like to sleep in the folds of my dining room curtains, but I've had new ones put up a few weeks ago so that's one the place I don't need to keep an eye on this year.
 
C C said:
There were red wasp incidents in the past where I avoided getting swarmed when everyone else got attacked. Because I just played it cool and didn't get crazily agitated, and maybe those too had become accustomed to me (i.e., The Wasp Woman or the Willamina or Willow of vespids instead of rats.) ;)
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Yeah, but if you lack the ability to direct the wasps to attack your sworn enemies? Rather, I should say if you don't befriend the leader and convince her (or him, in the case of rats) to do that, then what's the use?

For the record, Ben was the brilliant military strategist in those films--not Willard (though Danny was ok).

Ben, most people would turn you away (turn you away)
I don't listen to a word they say (a word they say)
They don't see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben

 
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And yet another queen wasp, again in the shower room. Maybe the one I put out the other day has come back in. I wonder if they come down the extractor vent pipe. Good job the damned thing didn’t try to build a nest in the pipe. This time I put it out of the front door, in the street. This is getting beyond a joke. Perhaps I’m in a Hitchcock film….
 
exchemist said:
And yet another queen wasp, again in the shower room. Maybe the one I put out the other day has come back in. I wonder if they come down the extractor vent pipe. Good job the damned thing didn’t try to build a nest in the pipe. This time I put it out of the front door, in the street. This is getting beyond a joke. Perhaps I’m in a Hitchcock film….
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May I make a suggestion? Rather than releasing it, spray something toxic onto it, insects breath through their skin, spiracles.
You can block those up and it will die, not immediately but die it will.
Other than that, roll up a copy of the financial times and beat the living hell out of it.
 
exchemist said:
And yet another queen wasp, again in the shower room. Maybe the one I put out the other day has come back in. I wonder if they come down the extractor vent pipe. Good job the damned thing didn’t try to build a nest in the pipe. This time I put it out of the front door, in the street. This is getting beyond a joke. Perhaps I’m in a Hitchcock film….
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Or a Bill Murray one.
 
Pinball1970 said:
May I make a suggestion? Rather than releasing it, spray something toxic onto it, insects breath through their skin, spiracles.
You can block those up and it will die, not immediately but die it will.
Other than that, roll up a copy of the financial times and beat the living hell out of it.
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We've been through that already on the thread. Nope.
 
We've had pretty good results from the glass jar system. Lower jar gently, slide stiff cardboard piece underneath, walk a few steps outside, releàse. Also helps to caulk or screen potential ingress points, keep screen door mended, etc. My experience has been attics of old houses (the unfinished kind) are a major entry point. Some have louvered vents to aerate the loose fill insulation common in US attics and insufficient screening.
 
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