Did you ever see the hornet nests that look like footballs or basketballs, gray and looking like papier-mache? They are found tucked up under an overhang of a house, in bushes, on outside furniture, on fences, almost anywhere. This time of year, July, is when these nests are beginning to get large, and people are noticing them more and more.

Grove Pest Control tends to get the panic calls now because many folks are out doing their mid-summer pruning or cutting of bushes. They start in with the hedge trimmers, and out come a bunch of angry, bald-faced hornets. It’s never a pleasant exchange; in fact, it is often a painful one. Sometimes it’s the landscaper who is on the losing end of a hornet battle. Whoever it is, it’s never good.

These bald-faced hornet nests start out small, sometimes resembling a weird-looking pipe hanging down from a tree or under an overhang, and it grows in size and inhabitants quickly. A nest can range from a few hundred hornets all the way up to 700-1000 hornets. These nests can get massive and look to be the size of a torso sometimes. So it is important to be very careful.

The question I get sometimes is should we remove the nest? I had a lady in Willow Grove who was concerned about the destruction of the hornets, and her fear was losing the pollinators. This is understandable, but one thing to consider is that while these hornets can pollinate, their main concern is feeding the nest and they feed that nest with other bugs. They are mostly meat eaters, and as a result, they are not the most efficient pollinators.

The other question to ask yourself when wondering whether you should remove a nest or not is where it is positioned in relation to where other humans frequent. If you have a nest in a bush or hanging low from a tree, that nest can be extremely dangerous. These hornets can be mean, and they are easily agitated.

What if the nest is high up under the roof overhang? We will sometimes recommend leaving the nest alone. It is high enough up off the ground that it isn’t a danger to anyone, and the nest will be dead by the winter, drying up, and becoming more of a decoration than anything. All those 700 hornets die off themselves. Only the queen survives.

Will other hornets move into the dead nest in the spring? No, they don’t want anything to do with an abandoned nest, so there is no need to worry about that.

How does Grove Pest Control handle bald-faced hornet nests? We provide a two-part service. We will first treat the nest with a non-repellent chemical, one that won’t agitate the hornets, making it a danger to our technician or the general public. The hornets will come and go as they have been, and over a 24-hour period, that nest will collapse. We will return within 48-72 hours once the nest is safe, and cut it down or scrape it down. Sometimes, if the nest if tucked into a bush or in a tree, we recommend leaving the nest. It is safe because the hornets are all dead, and that nest will deteriorate in the weather over the year. This saves you, the customer, some money. Then there are customers who want no reminder that they had a nest, and want us to remove it, which we are happy to do.