Pests We Treat - Hornets Above Mailbox Frighten Brielle, NJ Condominium Residents
Today, I was dispatched to one of my condominium communities in Brielle, NJ that I service on a regular basis. The property manager had relayed to me that residents were extremely concerned about a baldfaced hornets nest hanging right next to their mailbox. I could absolutely understand their concern once I saw the nest with my own eyes! Baldfaced hornets build a distinctive grey spherical nests that just keep getting bigger and bigger to accommodate the ever-increasing tier-by-tier combs as the queen keeps pumping out more workers. Without exaggeration, these nests can, over time, grow as big as a basketball that can house hundreds of wasps.
Baldfaced hornets are a type of aerial yellow jacket. They are long black intimidating-looking wasps with ivory markings on their faces and abdomens. They are social wasps (live in a colony) and are highly aggressive and territorial. If they feel that their nest is being threatened, they will sting — are can even squirt their venom into the eyes of a nest intruder. Also, since their stingers aren’t barbed, a single wasp can sting multiple times. Fortunately, no residents had been stung just yet, and, during this visit, I was going to do everything I could to make sure that this infestation would be removed so that no one would be stung in the future!
To treat this nest, the safest course of action was to use my telescopic bee pole with an aerosol can adapter. By using the pole and adapter, I would be kept a safe distance while treating the nest (after all, just like anyone else, I have no interest in being attacked by a swarm of angry wasps).
The aerosol provides instant knock-down when applied directly into the opening of the nest. When dealing with stinging insects, it is best to knock them down immediately. These insects instinctually know if someone is trying to tamper with their nest, and when treating a nest you want to go in “hard and fast.” Once the fogging application is released inside of the nest, any exposed insects are killed almost instantaneously. The fog spreads throughout all of the combs in the nest and stays in there long enough to get the job done.
Next, after the nest has been fogged and the ground is littered with dead hornets, it is safe to remove the nest. Depending on the location of the nest and the size of the branch it is attached to, I’ll either use the same pole and tap the nest out of the tree or I’ll use a pole saw and cut the branch holding the nest. Here, it was easier to just smack the nest right out of the tree with one firm hit. Once the nest hits the ground, I picked up all of the debris and put it into a garbage bag so that I could safely remove it from the property.
This job went very smoothly — the nest was removed without anyone being stung (including me!). The condominium association was pleased that its residents no longer had to put themselves at risk just to get their daily mail.