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It’s the Faith Pest Control podcast. Again, I’m your host, Mike Stewart, and I’m here with pest expert Fred Tally. This has been the month of the Hornet. In our last previous podcast, we talked about murder Hornets. We found out murder Hornets don’t really exist in Georgia. But you know what, when you see a big Hornet or a stinging insect, if you’re a consumer like me, you’re going to go I don’t want a nest of those guys on my home, in my backyard around my kids, my grandkids. So that’s why you need to hire a professional like Fred Talley at fake pest control. If you live in Jasper, if you live in North Georgia, anywhere in the North Georgia area, they are the pest experts. And today we’re going to talk about something that I don’t know if it’s in Georgia. We’re going to find out from Fred, the European one. It’s Fred tell us all about European Hornets. Alright Mikey, European Hornets are actually first discovered in in, in the States or North America, in the middle 1800s in New York. Met since then they’ve kind of spread the most of the eastern United States. They reach as far west as the central United States, Louisiana and in the Dakotas. That kind of area of the country or that area of our country. European harmony Hornets are commonly called brown or giant Hornets, but the generally speaking they’re mistakenly referred to as Japanese Hornets. And when people are speaking of Japanese horns, what they’re trying to really say is Asian giant Hornet, which we do not have in this country at all. The European Hornet excuse me is the largest and technically the only true Hornet found or commonly found in the United States. We have especially here in North Georgia, very common. We call it the bald faced Hornet it’s not actually a hornet it’s in the wasp family. So the European Hornet is really the only true Hornet that was commonly found in North Georgia although the Asian giant Hornet was found one dead one was found in Washington state but that that they do not exist in the United States that I am aware of. As far as on the European Hornets the adults do resemble our yellow jackets you know in in in this part of North Georgia most everybody’s familiar with the yellow jackets are very common ground nesting insect and you know, probably half to three quarters of an inch long. So the the European corn Hornet fully grown is about an inch and a half long so they’re you know, three times as big as two to three times as big as the yellow jacket. And they are colored roughly the same way you would you would look at it and think my god what a yellow jacket I’ve ever seen one that big. They have the same habits someone is is the yellow jackets. The Queen is kind of the workers are kind of a brownish were Yellow Jackets yellow and black the the worker European Hornet is more of a brownish but it’s a dark brown. You’d really have to look at it to to say all that’s not black that’s brown the Queen’s kind of a more reddish brown in our in our larger than the workers. The thorax is dark the body or the wings that’s the thorax is the body section where the wings and legs are attached and the abdomen is dark brown and black bands. The like I said before the head of the European Hornet at some point reddish brown becoming kind of yellowish near the face. They European Hornets typically, probably in my experience 75% of the time nest in the halls of trees. I get calls all the time where the European Hornets are, are bothering people at night because they they are attracted to light they are the only
insect stinging insect that I’m aware of that flies at night if there are others that fly at night. I am totally unaware of them but European And Hornets do fly at night they’re attracted to the light. So if you’re trying to sit out on your porch and enjoy quiet evening, you know you can be again they won’t necessarily stay even less provoked but if you’ve got a flyswatter or badminton ragged trying to kill them, they will sting you. But, so I will if I get calls and we get them not daily but weekly we’ll get several calls during the week about the especially this time of year for European Hornets. If somebody knows where the nest is, or can follow Him and find the nest, yes, we can kill them but there’s nothing that the US or any other pest control company can do to keep them from coming to your house of this. If you can’t find the nest, you can’t eliminate the colony they like I said they typically build in the hollows of trees, I have found them in barns sheds, the attics or houses wall voids of houses in between floors in the house I actually had them one time building in an in an exhaust fan vent sell them I don’t know that I’ve ever even seen a free hanging European Hornet nest generally speaking, the nest is built right at whatever cavity opening they find whether it be hollow of a tree or a knot hole out of a wall and they end up building inside that wall. And then you know the the nest starts at that point and then just goes deeper inside that void. The outside of the nest, what you can see of it is generally covered with a coarse thick paper like material in men they make this out of this decayed wood fibers. One thing that that struck me as odd and when I when I first discovered it, but especially if they build in a wall void or between floors of a house or in the attic of a house sometimes all this happened to me one time out of ignorance on my part, but I know better now, there was a nest in between two floors of a house and I sprayed insecticide in the nest to kill them. And they can’t they I mean they were obviously mad they were the buzz inside was very audible. But inside the house, it the odor was terrible, extremely offensive. And it kind of hung around for several days. The lady actually ended up spray in a probably a case of for breeze to finally get the odor out of owls so that they do emit a noticeable stench when they get when they get riled up. Again like all of the other stinging insects or the social stinging insects in the spring, the individual Hornet queens, they kind of emerged from hibernation, they’ll begin they’ll build the nest or begin to begin building a nest and she’ll start producing workers and then when when she gets enough workers to take over the next building duty and the nursing duty for taking care of the offspring. She will just begin to have off began to have young and that’s it. The workers of course all of which are female, you know they’ll go out forage for the food, they’ll feed the young they’ll they’ll continue building the nest. their diet, the European Hornet diet mainly consists of large insects, grasshoppers, flies, bees, Yellowjackets. their nest is generally three to 500 residents, if you will three to 500, Hornets they can get up to 1000. I don’t, you know, I don’t sit there and count them. I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered a nest of that magnitude. I think three to 500 would be a reasonable nest to encounter. They do have a somewhat seemingly longer seasonal cycle because they will.
They’re reaping reproductive the reproductive casts of their colony are produced well into the fall. When the reproductive is made, the females become the net regeneration of Queens the following spring in those males die off. As winter approaches the nest workers die off the future queens will abandon the nest and seek out shelter and some other type of some other protected place. In rotting stumps, tree hollows, even attics. The Queen like I said earlier she’ll overwinter overwinter individually all by herself, but you might find large numbers of Queens using the same hibernation site if you will. The the abandoned yes nest are not normally reused the next year in the spring each Queen starts their own, you know nest building process totally over. Like I mentioned earlier, unlike most other stinging insects European Hornets do fly at night they are attracted to bright exterior lighting or light shining through windows. That’s a common complaint is the the Hornets will actually bump into the wind to make you think they’re trying to break in the house with quite a lot of force causing some people to panic because they think that glass will break the eye and I have never encountered that that they broke the glass but they do will fly into the into the wind the lights and stuff. Sometimes you see workers collecting oozing SAP from trees, they can girdle a tree and what that means is they’ll they’ll knock through the mark all the way around a tree. Said kinda like oh, I’ll in particular dogwoods, birch rhododendrons and fruit trees. I’ve seen all of those with where they’ve been girdled by the European Hornets. Probably more for the sap than the wood fire, fiber, not fire. And there there are they can be considered a minor pass to beehives by preying on the honeybee workers but not not to the extent that the Asian giant Hornet is but of course, we don’t have them there. So that’s not generally a problem. But as always here at faith pest control, we offer a free consultation and as well as a 100% make you happy money back guarantee, if you hire fetes pest control to get rid of your bee or Hornet problem, or yellow jacket problem at the end of 30 days, if you’re not 100% happy with what we’ve what the service we’ve provided, we’ll come back and retrieve your home for free. We’ll keep on trading it for free. Do you tell us that you are happy, that still doesn’t make you happy, we’ll give you back every penny of the money you spent on the original treatment. Plus, we’ll pay you an additional $25. For your time in trouble this referral mothers, we want you to be happy with the service we provide or we won’t charge you a penny period. If you feel like what I’ve said makes sense. Please call fetes Pest Control today at 7708239 to 02 and ask to speak to me, Fred Dally. I’ll be more than happy to speak with you and answer any questions you have. Well, Fred, that lets us know that the European Hornets are a problem and you have the solution. Be sure to call Fred if you have any questions about any pests in North Georgia, Jasper, and anywhere in the cities like Alaska. You know, if it’s a North Georgia fight Pest Control conserves you. So be sure to subscribe to our podcast, it’s available online, you can get it on your phones, you can get it on your voice speaker systems like Alexa and Google Voice. You know, we do this as a public service for the residents and business owners of North Georgia so that you know what to do when you see pests that you want to get rid of and eliminate. And make sure to do the right thing you know, hire a professional, and Fred tally is the professional that you need to call at faith pest control. Until next time, this is Mike’s door for the faith pest pest control podcast. We’ll see you next time.
