Asiatic hornets

[widge]

We have both types of hornets here. There are so many of them, they are constantly swarming around us whenever we are out there. The sheer number of them is astonishing.

They are very aggressive, much like the horse flies. I've been stung twice and it was awful. We have traps on the terrace where we sit. If they weren't there, we would not be able to sit on our terrace outside of Winter. The wasps are aggressive too. They make nests under the roof tiles every single year and they will not give you any peace if you are sitting on the terrace. On a warm Summer day, there are hundreds of them.

I can tolerate a lot, but I'd rather not be run off my own terrace to get away from these painful creatures.

Hi, I am sorry to hear that you have so much problem, this is certainly not the experince we have had, we also get hornets of both types but although they buz round us occasionally, they soon get disinterested and go off elsewhere.

Even when we have fruit on the trees, we get a few after the fruit, so you have to be careful what your picking, but they are usually after the rotten fruit that we dont want to pick anyway, we leave them alone and they dont bother us too much.

For hornets to be that aggressive in quantity it sounds like you get nests very close to you. This is why we put traps out early in the year, to get any queens that think about nesting too close.

Also maybe the traps you have are too close to where you want to sit, therefore attracting them to where you are, maybe move them a little further away from where you sit.

The other thing we do it put water dishes out, we fill them with clay balls, which makes it easier for insects to feed, certainly the paper wasps that we get here most of the year are mainly after water, and not realy that interested is us or our food. Although my wife is diabetic and vegetarian, so there is rarely meat or sugary things on the table.

Maybe next year put hornet traps out early in the year, and see if that helps reduce your problem.
Dave

[Loup-garou]

The only downside of wasps for us is when the eat into fallen rotten fruit. Some of the dogs also like pears so we go out early and pick up grounded, bad fruit and put it outside the enclosed bit of the garden to separate dogs from wasps.

The long legged wasps build in my letterbox every year and we need to be watchful to stop them early before any larvae are produced.

[Blaze]

+1 Widge.
Putting traps out eary to catch the queens can stop nest being built too close.
Those paper wasps, which are never a nuisance here, can give quite a monster sting ! I haven't been stung by one personally, but i know others who have !

[widge]

+1 Widge.
Putting traps out eary to catch the queens can stop nest being built too close.
Those paper wasps, which are never a nuisance here, can give quite a monster sting ! I haven't been stung by one personally, but i know others who have !

I know

[Sparkle]

me too.........

DSC03512.JPG

[Bayleaf]

@widge Yikes, that's proper nasty!

@Sparkle - I had exactly the same thing on my ankle recently - could barely walk until the blister popped (on it's own), then kept it covered and teatree cream on it. Goodness knows what the critter was, that was a first. You think your's was a paper wasp?

This is the scab, two weeks later ....

IMG_20251007_152626.jpg

[Blaze]

Eeek, those all look horribly painful. They make me fell positively guilty for whingeing about my mozzie bites, which are trivial by comparison.
All my sympathies !

[Lori]

Those are awful !! They must have been so painful. I always dread anything involving the eye.

Both my bites from this year were not as bad as those photos. Both were on my hand; same hand. One was a bee and the other was a flying ant. The ant was actually worse than the bee.

We have about 75 lavenders around our pool and they attract a ton of bees (among other things). They often end up in the pool (alive).

[Polly]

That looks very like horsefly bites I’ve had - really very nasty, you poor thing!

[widge]

Those are awful !! They must have been so painful. I always dread anything involving the eye.

Luckily it was more uncomfortable than painful, it was definatly a paper wasp, we had a small nest in a bee box that was right on a pathway, I had already been past about 4 or 5 times, I obviously got a little close, I saw it out the corner of my eye, fly out and get me on the side of the face, it stung a bit at the time, but the picture was about 18 hours later, when I got up the following morning, so although I reacted quite badly, its wasn't fast.
I went to urgence andvthe doctor asked if I had done several rounds with Cassious Clay, which threw me a bit, as I hadn't heard him called that for over 40 years.