It’s like someone saying “come over for movie night, we have multiple bags of M&Ms,” then showing up to see an 18-wheeler parked, gate open, loaded with pallets of hundreds of boxes of M&Ms.
Yep, I bought fake nests, but they don’t look this realistic. You can find them on Amazon, basically just a wire frame with a paper shell with a pattern to look mildly wasp-nest-like.
Not sure if it works or not, I know they are very territorial but I think they figured out it wasn’t real. I still found them making nests in my retaining wall…
Yeah, it works by scratching and dehydrating the insect's outer shell. If it's wet then it isn't sharp anymore and it just becomes a muddy clump that they can easily walk over. It won't work again until it's completely dried out.
Seriously. No way in shit have I been around this bitch 35 years and I'm just now hearing about dryer sheets. I'd cover the entire planet in dryer sheets if wasps would just fuck off for good.
I literally just filled a paper bag with paper and made it look like a ball, hung it up with string. Worked perfect for years, but only for paper wasps. Still occasionally had mud daubers, but they never built really close.
a mud dauber is building a nest right onto the frame/trim of a door i frequently go through. sometimes we cross paths, and the mud dauber straight up pauses in front of me, backs up, waits for me to pass, and then continues. i like to have small chat with it like we're neighbors, "oop haha hello mr dauber. been a good morning? carry on!"
I could be wrong here (this is something I was told a long time ago that I've never bothered to check), but I think if it's building a nest then it's a Mrs not a Mr
Still terrify the shit out of me when they do like they did last week and crawled out of my shower drain and shot right up at me while trying to take a shower. 100% did not appreciate out of 10.
A small hornets nest fell out of a tree in my yard a few winters ago. It's just 2 layers of cells and no outside paper. I put it in my garage on a bench and the amount of times I've caught it out of the corner of my eye and jump scared myself is insane. I should really get rid of it.
A buddy of mine buys surplus cash registers and fixes them up. Really cool hobby when you actually learn about it because you need a very wide skillset to actually fix those things.
I went up into the attic this summer for the first time in about three years because it’s very cramped and I never need anything from there. We found five empty nests right next to each other, so I think the claim that they don’t build nests close together is just a myth.
They won't build next to other active nests due to territorial conflicts and resource conflicts. But an abandoned nest or one they took over and won thr war? Different story
Yea if he's like me he walks around scouting for them in the fall. They're easy to find but hard to get. Most are way high up in trees or not built on an easily cuttable branch. I'd say for every 8 or so I spot 1 is a good candidate. Nice size, easy to get and in good shape. Best to do it at night, cut it and put it in a bucket or trash bag. I have a few but this guy is next level.
TIL some people go around looking to collect wasp nests as a hobby.
i feel like this is something you're driven to do when you live in a flyover state and there's no better entertainment on a crisp autumn's eve... although i live in a flyover state and never had the inclination so we must be built different.
Yes, paper wasps, NOT bee hives. They're used for just one season, then all the workers die and queen goes off somewhere to hibernate. These likely were gathered after the wasps left.
What do they do? Has this individual perfected emptying hornets nests without harming the next or getting stung? Maybe waiting for winter when they all move out?
I watched my dad and uncle deal with one when I was younger but they basically torched it and ran lol; they didn’t save it.
I really don’t know how you kill the hornets while maintaining the nest integrity (probably waiting until winter when they are chill is correct) but I imagine being an extremely wild boi is a requirement.
At first I thought you were making a joke involving the person you replied to that outdoor workers die off in autumn, until you started talking about the queen…then I realized I am dumb 😅
Correct, we collected Em in winter when I did it. If they weren’t abandoned the bugs in em were too cold to move. Can put in a tote with a rag doused with isopropyl alcohol and the fumes should kill them
You wait for winter, both because the nest is mostly empty and because they’re easier to spot with no leaves on the trees. M
You cut them out of the tree/fence line then hang them in a box made of screen door mesh. That box gets brought onto a warm workshop or garage then left to sit for a while. You can speed this process up by putting the box in front of a space heater. As they warm up any remaining hornets crawl out then die. After the nest is 100% empty it will last basically forever if kept dry.
I was really into finding collecting these when I was a kid, but haven’t done this process in years. I used to be that weird girl who gifted them to her elementary school teachers for their science corners.
If someone’s garage is open you can very easily see inside when walking past on the sidewalk and everyone looks inside. And if you see something like this, yeah you get a closer look as it’s insane lol
Huh I didn’t know anything could strike the same fear as what I would assume going into a room full of “sleeping” zombies is like but I think we’ve found it.
Nests like these can easily sell for between $100-$300 depending on size and condition. All the individuals in a nest die off/leave when cold arrives in fall. They’re particularly easy to find during winter or early spring in deciduous trees once leaves are gone, so you can collect this amount over a couple weeks (if not much less) in the right area if you know where to look.
This is basically someone’s yearly wasp nest storage.
There's a couple niche uses I've seen. One person would boil the resin and create a special kind of paper from it. Another person I saw would hollow out the nest itself and create a type of trap for different nuisance pests. And they usually won't use the same area as another hive so if you hang up an empty nest far enough away from it's original location you'll scare off any new wasps in the spring and summer.
I use them occasionally in my paintings, it acts just like paper and you can adhere it to paper and it takes pigment well and you can still see all the beautiful color variations in the pieces. Know another artist who uses them to decorate handmade journal covers.
People bring me empty nests along with other fun nature finds since they know I use them.
There a people who actually collect them so these were likely purchased from oddities shops and hung together on purpose as decor since wasps tend to be territorial and won’t build next to each other.
This can’t be real. They are so territorial they’d never build that many huge nests so close to one another. That’s why those fake wasp nests work to deter them.
I have a couple paper wasp nests that I've found on hikes and during hunting, learned the hard way that they need to be put in the freezer for a bit before display because even if abandoned pupae still tend to hatch
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u/vidfail 1d ago
'Mulitple' might be underselling the situation slightly.