Welcome to Thunderdome

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 5:12 pm**

Catch them with chopsticks, one by one.

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:32 pm**

Saw ZERO movement inside the crawlspace tonight. I knew there were still a few alive in there... probably huddled in the center of the hive furthest from the cold air.

Possibly with the queen.

I covered the damned hive with foam, and tried to cut it with the "high pressure" spray, but it couldn't penetrate. I'll let the toxin saturate into the paper.

Tomorrow night I'm crawling in there to recover my chemical weapon platform, modify it, and then take my time setting my last fogger up to fire directly into the opening. You can see in the picture how my stabilizer fin was too wide and kept me from getting the can directly under the opening because it was hitting the wall.

Assuming that works and I see zero movement at the entrance after that, I'm flying out to an aircraft carrier, declaring an end to combat operations, patching up the hole in the foundation, and this winter I'm going in to vacuum up the pile of dead hornets and cut the hive out. No point in getting the final gasp of a dieing hornet... let'um freeze. Just a single sting makes for a bad day.

I hope the hive fits through the crawlspace access in one piece.

I also got video of foaming up the hive, but it's rather dull due to not seeing any bad guys.

Edited By GORDON on 1189647270

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:51 pm**

Awesome!

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 10:20 pm**

You deaded them!

When I cut my nest, it's more of a punching through the next. And my nest was much smaller. Your nest is going to have a lot of layers... like an ogre.

Good job The closeup of the corpses is beautiful.

Is there no insulation under your house?

Edited By Paul on 1189650213

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 10:23 pm**

NOW FEAST ON THEIR CORPSES!

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 10:25 pm**

Ha ha! Good one!

I want to see a bee necklace!

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 10:46 pm**

Paul wrote:Is there no insulation under your house?

Not all of it. That's something I've been trying to get to this year. I have a basement surrounded by compartmentalized crawlspaces where ad-ons were built. 2 crawlspaces were insulated, 2 weren't.

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 10:58 pm**

A couple weeks ago I was under my house, putting insulation supports up under the new section of the house. Some of the insulation had fallen, so I put supports all over the place.

I have three more boxes of supports and plan to do the main section of the house when I get around to it. I *hope* some wasps have moved in under there.

I noticed you changed the name to "Hornetacolypse."
Those things are wasps, not hornets. I can tell just by looking at them.

Even if they are baldfaced hornets, baldfaced hornets are not hornets any more than a panda bear is a bear.

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 11:17 pm**

I agree that they look alike, but I'm calling shenanigans on you claim that you can tell the difference based on my blurry picture.

Upon further research, I found some pics of wasp nests like what's in my basement.

However, it still also looks like this hornet's nest.

Still inconclusive, as far as I'm concerned, unless I can get one under a macroscope with a dichotomous key to take a close look at them.

Or you peddle up here and get yourself into the crawlspace to take a good look.

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 11:42 pm**

Got the 4GB video file compressed down to 120MB... but I'm tired of screwing with it tonight.

I can't even figure out how to snip 90 seconds from the middle.

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2007 8:55 am**

GORDON wrote:I agree that they look alike, but I'm calling shenanigans on you claim that you can tell the difference based on my blurry picture.

I was mainly going by the one crawling up the wall in 'this picture. There's a pretty good profile of it.

Edited By Paul on 1189715978

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2007 1:02 pm**

Just saw 8 entering/leaving the space in the span of 60 seconds. I guess foaming the exterior isn't making it into the inner chambers. Looks like more fogger fun tonight.

I'll also probably blast the foundation opening with some foam and spray, today.

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2007 2:03 pm**

I'm betting on Waspocalypse, too, based on the pictures of the dead ones. But it is admitedly still a bit inconclusive.

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2007 4:41 pm**

Wasps are lankier. Hornets are like this:

Besides... I think hornets are type of wasp. So you can't go wrong (unless I'm wrong) with wasp.

Besides, politically it's funner to battles WASPs.

Edited By Paul on 1189716290

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2007 4:43 pm**

Wow, tht looks exactly like what I've been killing.

I've been trying to figure out how you're supposedly able to tell the difference, when the two species actually look so much alike, and my pics don't show them clearly. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't think you have enough info based on those pictures to tell.

Edited By GORDON on 1189716315

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2007 4:45 pm**

Well then they are *not* baldfaced hornets.

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2007 4:49 pm**

You just edited and posted a second picture. That';s exactly what I'm killing./

Unfortunately, this wasp also looks exactly like what I'm killing:

http://www.stevenround-birdphotography. ... asp-01.jpg

Look at those these pics we just posted, and tell me how you think you can tell the difference between the two based on my pics. "Lankier" doesn't count. The three or four corpses I have on my desk are just as squat as the hornet pics.

Edited By GORDON on 1189716616

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2007 5:06 pm**

I could very easily be wrong. I might have been seeing what I *wanted* to see. But to me, it still doesn't look like what I've always considered to be a hornet.

Again, I think all hornets are wasps, but not all wasps are hornets. So him calling a hornet a wasp wouldn't be wrong.
But then again, I could be wrong.

Edited By Paul on 1189717837

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2007 5:15 pm**

I'm going to have to bag some of these up and send them to an environmental biologist at the University of Toledo, for a judge's ruling.

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2007 5:16 pm**

I've tried taking some close-up pics of my corpses, but I don't have a macro lens and they're too blurry to be useful.