Originally Posted by
BakerBoy
It's true. My neighbor and I are killers. We killed a hornet hive the size of two basketballs tonight. I feel ashamed, yet thrilled at the conquest.
After careful inspection post-dawn, the deadly black hornets appeared dormant. At least, the 15 guard bees on the double-basketball sized nest. After we donned our protective gear which included duct-taped raingear and a drysuit replete with helmet and PFD (later, to be explained), we closed in and examinied the nest. After a few beers, and parking my buddy's Tacoma closer, we decided to start hitting it with wasp/hornet killer from the local farm store. Each of us with a can in hand seemed likely to be enough. But it was not to be. While we were both running out of our loads, we heard buzzing from within. My buddy grabbed the 3rd can of spray, and I got the can of Big Gap Filler. We noticed some angry hornets attempting to emerge from the small hole in the huge nest, and after some careful on-the-fly planning, I injected the hole with spray foam while he let off with the hornet/wasp spray. Immediately thereafter I wrapped the entire nest up in a burlap bag, then zip tied the top. Then he finished the can of bee killer on it. Following that, I wrapped it again with another burlap bag. Satisfied with our work, I cut the branch off with my river knife, and we paraded around the neighborhood proudly. Until I heard some more buzzing from within.
At that point, we were pretty drunk, and pretty pissed off at these bees, so we did the only thing reasonable -- we got a can of pre-mix gas, his shotgun, and a few more beers.
We wandered down to the creek, and checked out a good location. After finding a suitable spot, I doused the entire thing in about a half gallon of pre-mix, lit it on fire, and threw it into the river. Apparently that much pre-mix goes a long way, as I nearly singed my face, but the bobbing firery target was just too good to pass up. The first shot went wide. The second shot from 15 feet was a direct hit, and sank the entire flaming bag into the creek. A couple of feet later, it surfaced, rekindled it previous flame, until it was shot a 3rd time, at which is went out completely.
After being satisfied by our hornet slaying and picking up the shells, we returned home, smelling of booze, gunpowder, and wasp spray. I hope everyone else's Monday was as invigorating.
PS, pictures to follow.
