Harvesting A HORNETS NEST! - HOMESTEAD BRAVERY
The other day my oldest son came in the house with his younger brother and claimed they had found a hornets nest. They found it up in the trees near our turkey coop and they both were excited and hoping I would cut it down for them.
Looking for and harvesting hornets nests is sort of a fall tradition around these parts. As the temps drop, the hornets begin to die off and you can safely harvest the nest without fear of being attacked. WHY? The nests are worth money and people will pay you for them so they can put them on display. Also, they can win blue ribbons every year at the county fair and that was more on the mind of my older son.
Hornets themselves can be sold if you capture them quick enough after the freeze. There are laboratories that will purchase female hornets and pay you for them. They harvests the stingers and venom and use them to develop allergy shots for severe attacks on those who are allergic to the bee or hornet venom. Some people actually make a living on harvesting the hornets part time during the summer and fall. But you need to learn the difference between the females and male drones. Only the females carry the venom.
The homestead has had a couple of hard freezes with temp drops down in the mid to upper 20's. So I felt pretty safe to harvest the nest and bring the boys along to watch and help. The temps during the harvest were going to be in the low 60's so just in case, I left my youngest son in the truck.
Here is the nest as seen from the side of our road on the property. Can you see it?
The nest was up in a very small tree and would take much to cut it down. So I got the chainsaw and Joshua grabbed a hold of the tree to keep it from falling over after I made the cut.
As we lowered the tree, the bottom of the nest caught against a nearby tree and ripped part of the bottom. Just a little damage. Now that the nest is on the ground, we need to carefully cut the bottom and top of the tree away leaving us only the section where the nest is attached.
With the nest separated from the tree, we carefully removed the damaged section from the bottom and revealed something most people will never see, the inside of a bald hornets nest. These guys are some of the meanest insects in the forest. And wouldn't you know it, there were a few actually still alive in the nest looking back up at us.
They were looking at us very angry having disturbed their nest but because of the cold temps, they didn't have the energy to do anything about it. Carefully we moved the nest back to the house and began to slowing take away the rest of the bottom and remove debris (with needle nosed pliers) and the remaining hornets that seemed to be alive.
The next step was to put a coating of shellac to harden the outside a bit and keep it durable. They say you don't have to do this but it really makes a difference in the durability of the nest. By itself, it really is fragile.
That's it! We will keep it outside a bit longer to make SURE that all the hornets are dead. We have some more freezing temps coming up so that should finish the rest of them off.
Have you ever harvested a hornets nest? Did you keep it? Let us know the details in the comments below!
Of course, you can also watch the video on Patreon.
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I like living hornets (and actually in general they are not aggressive towards humans) and would neither kill them nor destroy their nests.
Actually nothing is destroyed. The queen leaves the nest in late fall and the nest dies. A few dying hornets are left behind and the nest will disintegrate in just a few weeks. They will build a new nest in the spring.
Normally an old hornet queen dies in autumn. The new young queens hibernate and create new states in the coming spring, so everything depends on if they survive or not.
I never thought about selling them. I harvested a good size nest off of my property a couple years ago. It's in my living room as part of the décor. I didn't have any shellac on hand but I emptied a can of hair spray on it, haha. So far so good.
Yeah I'm sure hair spray would work good! Great thinking!
That is awesome that you got it! Kudos to the boys for spotting it!
They had a blast!
So are they going to enter it or sell it?
I try to stay as far a way as possible from bees. I am allergic and it is no fun getting stung an necessitating a trip to the hospital. I can understand people's fascination with the nests. They are amazing pieces of architecture. Your youngest doesn't seem to be all that happy to be in the truck. I'll bet he wanted in on the action. A nice entry for the fall fair. Hope he wins a first!
He's been stung before. He was fine staying in the truck. LOL :)
Good stuff right here. Good eye lil guy, and God Speed on the sale of it.
wow!! you caught a hornet!! you are a very brave kid
That's pretty interesting. I did not know the venom could be harvested.
Hornets can be really something. When I lived in Tennessee I used to work in tobacco. When we would hang it in the barn, many times hornets would be in the upper eave. I let them buzz around me while I was hanging the burley they never stung me.
Thanks for the post and the cool information! Now I know how to harvest an hornets nest!
Have a great week. Respectfully @sgt-dan (aka Sargento)
We get paper wasps in the lower mountains in Washington State. They are very interesting but I really would prefer if they didn't like our house. We've had them on the eves and a small nest in the attic. Arrgh!
This site (click on the pic) says that you might want to buy fake nests to keep them away.
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