hornets....

212rowboat

not the kind little things called paper wasps that caress your skin with their wee little stingers, and not the fancy dancy yellow jackets that try to behave all bold, but have only the threat of nuisance, but hornets... two to three inches long and the kind, that when they bite and sting, make you wish for death and willingly enter that bright tunnel with foul curses for all the living world flowing off your tongue...

they have found my floater..... and, apparently, they like it as much as I do....

who else has suffered this indignity, and how did you handle it? 

usually I approach those things clad in armor and armed with a flame thrower and a grin... I really don't want to scorch my boat, and I really don't want to spray corrosive chemicals all over it, either...

is nighttime and a pressure washer my best option?  seriously, how would or have you handled such?

212rowboat

I would fear the co2 having too cool an exhaust and harming finishes, upholstery and such...

oh.. need to specify- they're in the engine compartment.... brake cleaner... hmmmmm...

floater212

now if it was someone else's boat.... a can of Lysol and a flame.... flame thrower! well maybe not anymore, we used to do this when we were kids... about 35-40ish years ago.  it was cool.

212rowboat

Sun pad above it..

Wd40 works nicely, too, floater.. :-)

nhsd

Hairspray was always the flamethrower of choice around my home in the 1960's.....

212rowboat

I'm likely going to get a fog bomb, wait until evening, fire that thing off, yank up the engine cover drop it in and make tracks.... and send the neighbors kid over to check it out in the morning.. I almost volunteered my wife for that task, but the sofa isn't as comfortable for sleeping as it is for sitting.. and she's smarter than I am, and more devious..

212rowboat

If it was THE green hornet, it would be much simpler... I'd call up and conspire with batman, offer up robin in trade for its vacating the property, and pass that problem to the next victim...

Black_Diamond

Fantastic / 409 works great too, but you HAVE to get it on them.  They die fast.

JoeStang

Good luck, thats a huge PITA.

My wife FREAKS out if there's a frigging bumble-bee flying around, so some badass macho hornets would cause her to lose her mind, thats for sure.

Black_Diamond

Watch out for the nest size. They get big fast.

OldDogNewTrix

Good luck, let us know how it turns out. Joe, my wife is the exact same, hope we never experience that problem!

Hamdog

Well the good thing is they are in a confined space. Tape off any access to the engine compartment except one and use it introduce a killing agent.

JoeStang

Not really possible to completely block off the engine bay from the rest of the hull and even the cabin, IMO. Those bastards are tiny and will find any little passageway.

IMO get a pro out there, there's times to save money and times to sit back and be happy that isnt your job.

212rowboat

I hate being afraid of anything, but I am afraid of wasps.. long story going way back, but suffice it to say I met a whole family of yellowjackets as a kid and had nowhere to run..

Boat is good now... I'm glad I found them when and how I did.. and, right after they started building.. they were only the size of a baseball or so, and on my clean boat.. if I had found them this weekend with the family loaded up, including an infant and at least a wife allergic to them, it could have been bad news..

It's still cool in the eves here... Mid to high forties.. I just finished this up, and it was really much ado about nothing.. they are more docile this time of year, and cool temps make them more so.. they seek heat when attacking, which is why flames work so well at night (other than being pretty) :-) ... A halogen work lamp provided me light and heat as a decoy.. I grabbed a towel, and reached through a lawn and leaf bag with the toweled hand, grabbed the nest and yanked the bag inside out...

I swear, they were in the bag and the bag tied before they even buzzed..

I'm a big wuss, but not as big a wuss as I was this morning when I made this thread... I feel like I accomplished something, though my neighbor who gave up the advice just thinks I'm funny.. :-)

By his words, though, and inline with my experience with these things and especially their smaller cousin yellowjackets, they are much MUCH more aggressive when its warm, and later in the year.

Michael T

Two words - Hornet trap.You can hang one of these things (not expensive) which is filled with sugar water, pop beer etc. The little (big) bu**ers climb in and can`t climb out. MT   BTW there is a breed of Japanese hornets making their way into N.A. that swarm bee hives and are so big and aggressive that they bite the bees in half with one bite. They can wipe out a whole colony of hives in an hour. it is a brutal thîng to see. Sometimes numbers count....and discretion is always the better part of valour. Good ending DA! :-) MT

212rowboat

from now on there will be traps... for sure.... I'll get some today.

I use the boat almost every weekend, and it gets a bath after every single dunk.. Those things weren't there last weekend, which is to say they do in fact, as B_D said, work fast...

Maybe the cool temps and moist air this year are making them worse? I dunno.. maybe a neighbor got rid of a nest and they were just looking for a new home?

they aren't welcome on my boat.. or on my property.. we had a scare last summer with my wife and a single paper wasp sting that let us spend an afternoon and evening in the hospital... as far as a silver lining is concerned- I know to look before anyone else goes near the boat, now, and- I need to get my 14month old daughter checked to see if she's allergic, and get some pint sized epi pen's just in case.

Black_Diamond

Hang those 'no pest strips'. They work great.

TikiHut2

Wow, Grabbing that nest with a bag sounds like a 3 stooges episode and seems like an unreal risk in dealing with full blown 3" hornets but doing whatever it takes to get back on the water is the goal. They would be a worst case scenario if they got established in your boat or any other even near you.

I had some nasty red wasps nest in an intake vent to the engine compartment last year and found them when I reached around to lean on the vent, luckily I'm not allergic but easily provoked. I've since placed a piece of screen under each of the large intake screens. Dirt daubers are a huge mess down here and love to nest in the worst spots in the boat. One variety will fill up tubular voids like tank vents creating the most inconvenient issues to trouble shoot.

Sticky strips are a great critter tip. Actually on another similar note, we have a real pigmy rattlesnake issue on our property (60+ sent to RS death) but I recently heard that the sticky rat traps work well on them too.....Can't kill 'em fast enough. Just sayin' 

Japanese hornet swarms that bite bees in half with one bite!!! wth is that. And I thought our killer bee swarms were an inconvenient death.

Dream_Inn

I'd loved to have seen a video. Don't worry drew, I'd have been a chicken as well. Glad you got them early.

212rowboat

Dream_Inn said:

I'd loved to have seen a video. Don't worry drew, I'd have been a chicken as well. Glad you got them early.

I expected it to be epically spectacular, :-) , but it was a non issue and took a matter of seconds.. in my head, it was dramatic.. not so much in reality.

Cableguy Greg

I had a few wasps try to make themselves at home on my boat last week. My vent covers were all broken, so when replacing them I put fiberglass screen on the back of them before I put them back in the holes. Hopefully this keeps them from wanting to make a home at my second home.