This is the 12th Year we have lived on our 16 acre piece of land, a prairie remnant in NW Iowa. We have only had paper wasps, bumblebees, native bees and honeybees if a farmer was raising them nearby. But this year is different - we started seeing this unknown wasp/hornet in our garden and then on our surrounding prairie. It started showing up on adjacent neighbors properties as well. My wife and I identified it as the Bald-face hornet. That sent shivers down our spines when we read about their aggressive nature. We have looked on our property for a nest so that we could have a professional exterminator get rid of them, but have failed to identify a nest. I feel like it is a little bit like trying to piss in the ocean to raise the water level.
We have about a 6-inch layer of mulch in our garden to repel weeds in the garden and it has worked beautifully. We rarely have to pull a weed anymore because it works so effectively. Everything I have read about the Bald-faced Hornet indicates it lives in a large football-sized or basketbal-sized paper nest either in a tree or bush about 8 feet off the ground with them using one hole for both entry and exit. We have looked in trees and bushes and can’t locate one. We are wondering if it is possible they could be under the mulch. Lately, we don’t see any hornets until about 9:00 am and then all of a sudden it seems like they magically appear. They seem very intimidating and thus far we haven’t been stung but if they are able to defy what the experts say and nest under the mulch, when we walk on the walking paths between vegetable rows, that would worry me that we could be disturbing them. Have any of you guys had a similar experience and if so, how did you handle it? This has really made gardening un-fun and living in the country we depend on our garden and it is fairly large along with our 10 fruit trees and 72 Aronia bushes. I have turned to this forum a lot with my Kubota tractor questions and I greatly respect your collective knowledge on a lot of different subject matter. Thanks for your advice and feedback.
We have about a 6-inch layer of mulch in our garden to repel weeds in the garden and it has worked beautifully. We rarely have to pull a weed anymore because it works so effectively. Everything I have read about the Bald-faced Hornet indicates it lives in a large football-sized or basketbal-sized paper nest either in a tree or bush about 8 feet off the ground with them using one hole for both entry and exit. We have looked in trees and bushes and can’t locate one. We are wondering if it is possible they could be under the mulch. Lately, we don’t see any hornets until about 9:00 am and then all of a sudden it seems like they magically appear. They seem very intimidating and thus far we haven’t been stung but if they are able to defy what the experts say and nest under the mulch, when we walk on the walking paths between vegetable rows, that would worry me that we could be disturbing them. Have any of you guys had a similar experience and if so, how did you handle it? This has really made gardening un-fun and living in the country we depend on our garden and it is fairly large along with our 10 fruit trees and 72 Aronia bushes. I have turned to this forum a lot with my Kubota tractor questions and I greatly respect your collective knowledge on a lot of different subject matter. Thanks for your advice and feedback.
