> > Ohhh. What's the recommended method of removing a five-inch wide paper wasp nest which is attached to my house at about chest level, and it's about four feet from my front door... and three feet from my garage door?
>
> Basically you go get a spray can of Raid, or other brand, of stuff that's made to kill bees and hornets. Then go out at night, because at night there won't be any bees flying around outside the hive, and spray into the hole at the bottom for a few seconds -- not long, but long enough to soak it a bit. High tail it out of there, and in the morning, all the bees will be dead on the ground, and you can take down the hive.
>
> S "not sure what you do if you don't want to kill them" am

Thank you, Sam. Ideally, yes, I was thinking it would be kinder to remove the nest intact (to relocate it somewhere else, that is). The garden experts always say wasp species are one of the best biological methods of pest control that can be found in the garden. Unfortunately, I'd need someone in one of those spaceman-sealed "wasp suits" which Stephan mentioned. And I wasn't going to do what some folks at work suggested, in torching the nest with gasoline! So we followed yours and Dave's Dad's advice, and bought a "bee bomb" type aerosol spray for wasps & hornets.

So the nest has been sprayed twice in the last 48 hours. It's instant knockout. That part is really strange considering the active ingredient is pyrethrins. I looked it up... It's made from an extract of chrysanthemum flowers (a compound really toxic to them, but which can be used as a baby shampoo by us). We chose a spray canister -- the cheap $4.97 one ;) -- which allows application from two metres away but some aerosols have a line of fire of up to four metres. Dave sprayed directly into the hole the second time around, and was shocked to hear some "angry buzzing" from a lone defender left in the hive.

I also found out that this nest is a hornet's nest because of the way it's built -- a gray, paper-like structure shaped like an inverted teardrop, with an entrance hole at its bottom. If it were just a wasp's or bee's nest, it's conceivable to just leave it alone, and they in turn do the courtesy of leaving us alone -- then Winter would take care of them and that's that. But since hornets are much more aggressive and territorial, I think we basically had to kill them. I read that in late summer hornets could start stinging intruders from up to eight feet away from the hive. And you KNOW where the entrances of my house are located... Ouch.

At any rate, I think it'll be safe to take the remains down sometime this weekend. Half my family wants to cut it open and see how the insects built the intricate little hex cells on the inside. The other half (okay, the "one") wants instead to cut it down and take a baseball bat to the nest to "make sure they're all dead." :-)

Wolf "social insect, but flighty" spirit