I think that this is my one phobia, and as luck would have it there appears to be a wasp nest in the bushes near the window of my office. The other day I counted twenty-seven of the fuckers that I had come through the window in the last couple of weeks, which I was then forced to kill. The hateful bastards are aggressive as fuck, constantly flying around you and onto food. Not like bees, who leave you alone if you don't bother them. I hear that they're related to hornets. Today I got stung, and I've now resolved to find the nest, and kill them all. Anyone know anything about this - is burning it the best idea? That would be nice.
Don't burn it if it's right next to your office building. We had a thread on this awhile back: http://www.wordforge.net/showthread.php?t=60864 Good luck in getting rid of them. They are a nuisance.
Burning should be the final step, but you need to diminish the number of wasps in the nest. Get a milk crate: Set it outside within line of sight of the nest, turn it open side down. Get a bucket and a bowl that's nearly as big in diameter as the mouth of the bucket. Fill the bowl with water and dissolve a cup of sugar in it, then set it on top of the milk crate. Take the bucket and put it over the bowl. The wasps will fly up under the milk crate to get to the sugar water, and won't be able to get back out. It works. In a couple of days the thing will be filled with dead wasps. Give it a week, then go for the nest. Lemme know if you try it, Hank.
In Canada, we use something like this, except we take one of those plastic 2-quart bottles of soda, and cut it from the top about 4 inches down. We then invert it so the hole is pointing downwards. The Wasps fly in, and can't get out. Sugar water is good, but what works even better is beer! When the sun shines on the beer and warms it up, the odor drives Wasps to the bottle like you wouldn't believe. You could probably get rid of an entire Wasps nest this way.
We've used lemons in the sugar water too....that brings them in as well. The other variation on this is to use beef liver. In that case, they gorge themselves and die. The downside, of course, is that you've got meat sitting out in the summer heat.
I hate the bastards too. They'll suddenly just sting you for no reason other than they're ornery. I've gotten rid of them by simply waiting for the sun to go down when they're all back in the nest and settling down for the night. Then I spray the hell out of the nest with a large can of wasp killer with a long spray range. Works.
Find the nest, buy some of that Wasp-Killer spray (Home Depot, etc...). It shoots like up to 20 feet or so. Wait until dusk, when the wasps are all back inside the nest, the doust it w/ the spreay. Problem solved.
I am pretty sure they would be able to. I think it's just their intelligence tells them to keep circling around the rim looking for a way out than to fly downwards into the middle of the bottle for an opening.
Minnow traps (small bait fish for you non-fishing types) work like this too. They swim in but rarely figure out how to escape.
I had one building a nest right by my front door a week or so ago. I could hear the little bastards buzzing up against the wall where they were building between my front porch awning and the wall. So I got the RAID wasp killer, and blasted the nest with it one morning as I was returning home from work. It was pretty cool that morning, low 60s, so they all snuggled in. Saw at least one drop dead right away, and haven't heard a peep out them since.
Either Octavian's idea or bombing the nest after dark will work. You don't need wasp&hornet spray, either . . . gasoline, kerosene, or alcohol will work quite well.
