Hornet's nest

Yesterday morning I got up and started to lay out the electrical boxes in the shop. I started nailing some of the boxes into the studs and pretty quickly there were a couple of small wasps buzzing around my head. I got to looking around and realized that there was a hornets nest on the bottom of the top plate of the ground floor. The nest was the size of a softball. So it wasn't huge, but it was decent size. It was clearly new because all the hornets were small in size. But when I got within a few yards, they started buzzing at me. They were clearly aggressive in nature. So I got some hornet/wasp killer spray, the kind that shoots a foam stream for 30+ feet. Wben I read the directions it said that I should not spray it at a hornets nest until night. The can said that hornets like this are highly aggressive and even if I think I have killed all the hornets, I should spray the entire can - and only do it at night or early in the morning before the hornets are active.

I determined to do it that night. So I told Dennis about the nest and said that he shouldn't work near that side of the garage that day - there was plenty to do elsewhere. I talked to Dennis at about lunch and he said that even though he was working on the second floor about 25 feet away, the hornets kept buzzing him. I guess the nail gun was still making their nest vibrate. And Dennis works on a 10/12 pitch roof (about 39.2 degrees - that is VERY steep for a roof). So Dennis took a shovel in one hand and the spray can in another and smashed the nest while spraying the nest down. I told him he was crazy, but he said that they didn't bother him again after that.

I guess hornets and wasps love construction sites because they make their paper nests out of the fine sawdust that is everywhere.