It's not. A more reasonable guess for a good-size wasp's nest at its peak is between 40K and 100K although most of them will be out foraging during the day; 10K might be a good guess as to the number actually in the nest during the day.kalmar wrote:10,000? That doesn't sound right
That's quite a lot of the little bastards.
I've treated wasps nests in attics before (where they have been causing an actual problem in the house, a more usual treatment is as described for hornets below). It's an "interesting" experience.
Climb into *dark* attic through trap, carrying sprayer.
Locate nest. Hope that there's only one.
Set sprayer to "wide fan"
Approach nest (being careful to only step on the rafters), spraying insecticide to drop the little fuckers that are flying.
Put tip of sprayer into core of nest whilst spraying, agitate forcefully to destroy nest.
*run* to trap, whilst spraying backwards over shoulder.
Exit attic and close trap.
Change underpants.
Hornets are different.
Hornet nests are *much* smaller, for starters, a few hundred inhabitants at most. They are less aggressive unless you provoke them, but once provoked they are capable of being significantly unpreasant. Best treatment for hornets is to wet the entrance holes and chuck a load of residual insecticide powder at it - incoming workers carry the powder into the nest and kill it from the inside.
Couple of years back, I was working as a house painter, wasp and hornet nests were a regular hazard. We had a game called "wasp nest golf", this is when you discover that the "firewood box" on a balcony has a wasps nest in it. The game is played thusly: One player has a broom, the other a can of Raid or equivalent. "Broom" player lifts lid of box with tip of broom, thus liberating the little yellow cunts. This needs to be done with a swift, decisive action. "Raid" player empties can of raid at horde of little yellow cunts while "Broom" player ejects the nest itself as far away as possible with broom (or smashes it with broom, depending on skill of player and positioning of nest). Both players exit balcony via scaffolding at high speed. Balcony is now considered "out of bounds" for the rest of the day. Points are scored for distance achieved with nest, and elegance of exit from balcony. Multipliers for high balconies (10m+ scores double) and points removed for stings received.
Simon
