A bald-faced hornet’s nest has been steadily growing in an eave on my house. Terrified of hornets, I researched how to remove the nest safely. Then came the blue jay, nature’s free pest control service to the rescue.
Over the past couple of weeks, a bald-faced hornet’s nest has steadily grown in an eave of my house. Its location problematic for a few reasons: my daughter likes opening her window and putting in a screen in the spring and summer months to let fresh air in. With the nest only about five feet away, it concerned me that one or more of the hornets would be alerted to the sound of her opening the window and dart straight into her bedroom.
If you know me, you know I don’t play when it comes to hornets or wasps. And by don’t play, what I’m really saying is: if a winged marauder with the ability to sting repeatedly is anywhere nearby, I get the hell out of dodge, run inside my house, and lock myself in the bathroom while shaking uncontrollably and murmuring under my breath, “Please don’t find me. Please don’t find me.”
And so, while you may not know my daughter or her reaction, imagine that then add frantic vocalizations reaching Mariah Carey level pitches.
The hornet’s nest is also constructed not far from our driveway basketball hoop. And while my son would love for every shot he shoots to be silent or just the sound of a slight swoosh of nothing but net, that’s not the reality. So I was a worried the clang of the rim on a missed shot or the thud of the backboard might eventually cause a swarm of not-so-happy bald-faced hornets to emerge and go medieval on him.
Researching how to safely remove a bald-faced hornet nest
Bald-faced hornets are extremely aggressive I’ve learned. Quite a bit of research has been conducted on my part in an attempt to narrow down exactly how to handle this growing situation without ending up with welts all over my body — and the whole not ending up with welts all over my body wasn’t looking too promising the more I researched.
Here’s what I learned:
- Bald-faced hornets fiercely protect their nest
- Their smooth stinger allows them to sting repeatedly
- They can spray venom from said stinger
- This venom can cause temporary blindness
- Oh, and their stings hurt like a motherlover
According to Terro, bald-faced hornet nests can grow up to 14 inches wide by 23 inches tall (the size of a basketball). No thanks. I like my basketballs full of air and bouncy, not a papery housing for 100-700 worker hornets with an endless supply of stinging at their disposal in their rear ends.
With all that said, I’m not one to go hells bells on nature and buy every sort of chemical repellant known to mankind to destroy another living being, which yes, even includes the dreaded hornet. A few years back, when I was reading one Buddhism book after the next and thinking long and hard about the interconnectedness of all living creatures within our universe, I even saved a handful of hornets’ lives when they mistakenly entered my residence and couldn’t find a way to escape. I managed this all while not being stung by using a sheet of paper to help them fly out free into the world again. One such hornet, who’d exhausted himself in my window, almost seemed appreciative by my gentle act. This is mind boggling to me perhaps more now than it was then.
But I did want to take care of this new nest that started off relatively small and seemed to be growing a couple inches in length each day. Its location posed at least a minor threat to my children’s wellbeing. If the hornets want to build a nest, cool. Do your thing. You’re part of nature, too. But you can’t do it right next to a bedroom window or a basketball hoop.
So I walked around the side of my house, turned on the water spigot, grabbed the hose, and tried to shoot it down. The water pressure wasn’t strong enough so all I managed to do was piss off the bald-faced hornets who started to wonder what or who was raining on their new housing construction. After feeling like I made eye contact with one, I quickly made my way bolted back into the house, locked the door, and then urinated in the entryway all over my shoes like a new puppy happy to see its owner at the end of a long day.
I texted my wife Allison at work:
I may need to call someone about this bald-faced hornet nest. It’s growing by the day. I can probably knock it down myself. It’s more of what happens shortly after is my concern.
Note the after.
Allison texted back immediately with, and I quote:
Let’s try knocking it down first. We can do it together.
This tells me one thing for sure: that Allison had a momentary lapse in her judgment and memory and seems to have forgotten that she has been poking fun at me and her brother David for years years I tell you because of how ridiculously terrified we both are of hornets and wasps.
Grown men the two of us? Eh, yeah. Terrified of hornets? Exactamundo.
We have a motto in her house called TEAM PILLOW. Since we live so far away from family, we took on this motto years ago as a way to be self-sufficient knowing that there’s really no one around us who can jump in and assist at a moment’s notice. It’s on us to help each other out.
Allison was taking this a bit too literally when it came to the hornet’s nest when she followed up the “We can do it together” with “Can you use a ladder?”
Don’t use a ladder
I’d already thought of a ladder, which seemed like a not so good terrible idea. As someone with anxiety, my brain immediately always always goes to the worst possible outcome and that, for me in this moment thinking about combatting a hornet’s nest while standing on a ladder was, “What if I knock down the nest and it falls right on top of me?”
A reasonable question.
And a flashback to Thomas J of My Girl fame, a movie forever banned in our home.
Plus, I’d already done a variety of research on hornets and dropped in questions like, “How do you knock down a hornet’s nest that’s high in the air?” And the response on every website I visited pretty much always started with, “Don’t get on a ladder.”
But, and this is something you can do right now yourself, if you do a Google search of “If a bald-faced hornet’s nest is up high, should you use a ladder?,” the initial result specifically states that a ladder is “extremely risky” and “generally not recommended due to potential for aggressive attacks.” Also, when they start stinging your dumbass, although the advice doesn’t explicitly say “dumbass,” though perhaps it should, you can fall and further injure yourself, all while continuously being stung by a swarm of angry hornets hellbent on offing you and protecting the queen and her lair at all costs.
This advice is followed by a video on YouTube by the Wasp Hunter with the title: “How not to treat a hornet nest. Attacked by hornets.”
With advice littering the Internet at my disposal, I texted Allison back: A ladder would be a bad idea.
Nature’s very own pest control at your service
Thankfully, there’s nature’s pest control services that’ll visit your home free of charge. And the way I see it, if nature commits the murder, I’m not liable, right?
On the Internet and even real life, you’ll often hear blue jays referred to as “a$$holes” or “backyard bullies.” I once held that opinion myself. But over the last five or six years, that shifted with the arrival of my blue jay pal Gizmo and his significant other. Every spring the couple take up residence in the woods behind my house, build a nest, and knock boots.
Boots, as in tail feathers.
Are blue jays loud as hell? Yeah.
Do they mimic hawks for the sole purpose of scaring away all the other birds and squirrels so they can gorge alone at the bird feeder? Yeah, usually.
Do the bastards sound like they are laughing at you at all other times when you walk by them unknowingly? You damn right.
But they are a ridiculously intelligent bird. Despite lacking minimal black feathers in their beautiful blue plumage, blue jays are a member of the corvid family along with crows, ravens, and magpies. The corvid family is among the most intelligent species on the planet rivaling that of a full grown great ape, and according to our current political climate, smarter than a significant portion of voting Americans.
And that hawk mimicry blue jays are so well known for isn’t all for trickery. Aside from the “backyard bully” label, blue jays are also known as the “sentinels of the woods,” alerting every animal, winged or not, within earshot, of hawks and other predators.
And lo and behold, while I’m sitting here looking up at this growing bald-faced hornet’s nest in the eave of my house, so, too, is a blue jay, only he or she is sitting on a tree branch at eye level with it unbeknownst to me.
Six years ago, we had a major yellow jacket problem to the right of our front door. Unlike bald-faced hornets, subterranean yellow jackets prefer building their nest underground. I think the reasoning behind this is so they can sting the ever-loving shit out of you while you’re in your front yard cutting grass or weed-eating and them BAM! out of nowhere comes a dozen or more of the bastards from an abandoned mole hole stinging you repeatedly while you run back inside the house only that doesn’t really matter to them because they’ll stick to your shirt like glue and sting you inside your home then you have to figure out a way to get the damn things and their corresponding anger out of your house all while searing pain grips your body from head to toe.
That’s my theory at least.
I don’t know how many yellow jackets were in the below ground nest off our front patio but my guess is hundreds. It was a bit nightmarish trying to get from the front door to the car each day. It was like playing a real life game of HOT LAVA. My kids were much younger then as well so that concerned me.
I tried a few DIY methods to no avail.
At the same time this was all going on, our resident mama skunk had taken up shack under my workshop as she did each year come spring to birth a new litter of little stinkers. My office was set up in my workshop and it smelled like holy hell every year when she’d arrive like clockwork. Not to mention my dog Motzie RIP managed to get sprayed at least once per year by mama skunk. Oh, the deodorizer you will buy to get that smell off a dog’s coat… only you never really do despite the “guaranteed” slogans on each and every bottle.
I say this all because seeing what the blue jays would eventually do to the bald-faced hornet’s nest in my eave reminded me of what mama skunk did as soon as I began contemplating pest control for the yellow jacket nest.
No need.
One morning it was all gone.
Completely dug up.
All of it.
Horizontal combs shredded left and right.
Smelled like skunk big time in the area where hundreds of yellow jackets once emerged.
Come to find out, skunks are major predators of yellow jackets. They eat ‘em up: larvae, pupae, adults and all. Raccoons are the same. They sniff the jokers out at night and go nuclear on a nest. High in protein from what I read.
The anti-climactic showdown: blue jay vs bald-faced hornet
Yesterday, as I was trying to have a conversation with a juvenile squirrel in my driveway, a squirrel I may add that didn’t seem interested in casual conversation with a hoo-man and in turn scurried off to hide in the wheel well of my car, I heard a flutter of wings followed by the classic blue jay call. If you visit the link and scroll down, it’s listed under “Calls,” specifically the one recorded by Randolph Little in Florida on March 30, 1962.
As they were attacking the bald-faced hornet’s nest, I’d apparently spooked the blue jays. It was also then I noticed quite a few angry hornets circling fifteen feet above my head. Out of instinct, not to mention fear and self-preservation, I quickly made my way back into the safety of my house.
I texted Allison:
Welp, don’t need to worry about the bald faced hornet nest. Unfortunately I interrupted the blue jays while they were going after it. Had to run back inside since the hornets started to swarm. I was wondering if/when the blue jays would find it and go after the larvae. I watched a cool documentary about blue jays two years ago that said they do that with hornets and wasps and yellow jackets.
A few minutes later, the blue jays were back with a vengeance and the bald-faced hornet’s nest no more as I witnessed the papery entrance of the nest drop down into the bushes from my view at the bay window (still safely inside my house).
I texted Allison a photo of the severed hornet’s nest entrance with the caption:
Looks like they finished it off. Here’s the former entrance. Good job Gizmo!
Allison replied:
Wow! Thanks nature!
Then I replied:
Nature you crazy.
Then she replied with a meme from the movie Old School starring Seann William Scott (aka Stiffler) as Peppers and Will Ferrell as Frank “The Tank” when Frank accidentally shoots himself in the neck with a tranquilizer dart. Her text read:
I like you, but you’re crazy.
For anyone wondering what’s one of the greatest scenes in comedy film history, that scene I linked from Old School is Top 5, all day.
As for the documentary I referenced above, it comes from Lesley the Bird Nerd’s YouTube channel. The thumbnail of the video has a blue jay munching on a wasp nest comb with text overlaid that reads: The Wasp Slayer.
Much like the skunk and raccoon, blue jays enjoy a high-protein meal consisting of larvae, pupae, and even the queen within a wasp and hornet’s nest. Based on the video, juvenile blue jays, perhaps because they don’t yet know any better, will even catch and eat worker wasps mid-air while they are trying to protect the hive. Kids will be kids.
So, for anyone who thinks blue jays are a$$holes or backyard bullies, remember what all they bring to the table if you ever see a destroyed wasp or hornet’s nest near your home. It’s more than likely the result of a blue jay, although woodpeckers and wrens will have a go at a hornet’s nest as well.
And sure, blue jays have got attitude A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E and lots of it. Yeah, they are quite the tricksters. They’re corvids. It’s in their DNA makeup. But when it comes to wasps and hornets hanging out in eaves or soffit or even in a tree branch nearby, blue jays are nature’s ultimate pest control service at no charge.
They saved me potentially a hundred dollars or more or whatever it is those guys charge nowadays. Because of the various wildlife occupying the woods behind my home, I haven’t needed their services for a very long time.
Nature, you crazy. But I like you.
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