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Seems to be Hornet time here.


old man
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We normally get the native hornets nesting about our place and this spring I've seen several queens hunting in the garden. Never had much problem with them apart from the odd loss of a honey bee or two.

Thankfully, no sign of the invasives round here yet.

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I lived abroad and one of the nest boxes I'd put up had Great tits in it, any way they stopped going in, so I looked in side and there was about five or six very large hornets in there lava, the bird dead inside, you can work out what happened next. Horrible things. I don't think there from this world. 

Edited by Nublue 22
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10 minutes ago, 12gauge82 said:

Ive seen one European hornet so far this year, it was flying around the house like a chinook 😬

I'm guessing you've never had a stag beetle try to fly through your face then. 😝 Night fishing and it seriously got me touching cloth. 

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47 minutes ago, Dougy said:

I'm guessing you've never had a stag beetle try to fly through your face then. 😝 Night fishing and it seriously got me touching cloth. 

To be fair, no I haven't. They look monsterous 🤬🤣

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The other week we had a hornet (unidentified type) in the living room but immediately it flew out through an open window before it could be contained and identified.  A few years ago a woman who lives local to me was down in the woods with three dogs when one of the dogs disturbed a hornets nest. She told me that the response of the hornets was terrifying. The whole swarm went into full attack mode and her and the dogs were chased running right up through the wood and out into a field.  She had three stings and all three dogs had stings as well.  The dogs were taken to the vets for treatment and the woman was taken to the doctors and had injections .  She said that the pain of the stings was far greater than any wasp stings that she had had.  After a few days I went with care to have a look at the nest which was in a rotten tree stump.  All I can say is that it was really active and you wouldn't want to disturb it at all.  This was several years ago before there was a public notice of hornet nests and I didn't even know anything about hornets or different types.  As an aside there was a wild honey bee nest up in afork of a large tree in the middle of the orchards and that was destroyed. The bees used that tree every year but since it was distroyed they've never come back. 

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On 04/06/2024 at 20:43, Dougy said:

I'm guessing you've never had a stag beetle try to fly through your face then. 😝 Night fishing and it seriously got me touching cloth. 

I was transporting a dinghy which had been stood a week or two on a West Highland beach. The boat was upside down on the roof bars of my Land Rover. It was a hot day and I opened the sun roof to allow some air in. After a mile or three at cruising speed (towing a caravan) something dropped from inside the dinghy and fell on my neck. The ten year old girl In the seat behind me screamed, “argh! It’s on your neck, it’s on your neck!” I tapped whatever it was away and it flew round the vehicle until, thankfully, the Jack Russel on the back seat did what Jack Russels do and killed it. 
When I could stop a post mortem identified the offender as a Devil’s Coachman beetle.
No harm done, but definitely not what you need at 60mph on a dual carriageway.

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On 04/06/2024 at 23:00, Minky said:

The other week we had a hornet (unidentified type) in the living room but immediately it flew out through an open window before it could be contained and identified.  A few years ago a woman who lives local to me was down in the woods with three dogs when one of the dogs disturbed a hornets nest. She told me that the response of the hornets was terrifying. The whole swarm went into full attack mode and her and the dogs were chased running right up through the wood and out into a field.  She had three stings and all three dogs had stings as well.  The dogs were taken to the vets for treatment and the woman was taken to the doctors and had injections .  She said that the pain of the stings was far greater than any wasp stings that she had had.  After a few days I went with care to have a look at the nest which was in a rotten tree stump.  All I can say is that it was really active and you wouldn't want to disturb it at all.  This was several years ago before there was a public notice of hornet nests and I didn't even know anything about hornets or different types.  As an aside there was a wild honey bee nest up in afork of a large tree in the middle of the orchards and that was destroyed. The bees used that tree every year but since it was distroyed they've never come back. 

A very, very painful sting. Got stung on the lower shin (one crawled up my leg whilst out pigeon shooting) in the summer of 2016 (?) and can still see the effects to this day. The area below the site of the sting went all 'veiny' and when pressed the tissue stayed depressed for a long time. It still does to a lesser degree.

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2 hours ago, Rim Fire said:

Seen a few at night when foxing you can see them with the the thermal spotter 

How do you see them at night.?  I thought that they would have been inside of the nest.

Like wasps.

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22 minutes ago, Minky said:

I thought that they would have been inside of the nest.

Hornets are active at night and are attracted to light, like many insects.  They will fly into rooms at night attracted by the light.

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48 minutes ago, Minky said:

How do you see them at night.?  I thought that they would have been inside of the nest.

Like wasps.

Hornets hunt at night they are quite a big insect never tried to follow one infact went the other way 🤣

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