Ever have a hornets nest come after you?

[Marta]

Once I disturbed a yellow jacket nest while tearing down an old shed. I got stung eighteen times, my personal best. Any body ever beat that record?

9/14/03 Just north of Stecoah Gap, I was looking up and planted my pole right in a nest. Stung more than 20 times. (It was hard to count the stings around my ears and in my hair.) The nasty ones were the ones that got tangled in my socks and stung themselves to death. I felt pretty crummy for a couple of days.

My husband, my hero, went back and retrieved my hiking pole, picking up five or six stings in the process.

I always look down when I walk now.

I was wearing some ankle-high Patagonia socks that day. I picked the dead yellow jackets out and washed them. The next time I wore them, my ankles turned red. It took another ten or so washings for that to stop happening.

[Nean]

Why did your ankles turn red??

[Marta]

Why did your ankles turn red??

I guess there was still enough residual venom in the fabric to irritate my skin. Four or five yellow jackets were tangled in the cloth and stung it (often getting through to my ankles underneath) until they died. The other YJs just stung me and flew off as I ran away. Some I was even able to brush off before they did much damage. As I was running, I was more concerned about getting the YJs out of my hair and off my face. By the time I was worried about my ankles, the little devils had well and truly buried themselves in the sock ribbing.

[sherrill]

I don't normally take out nests around my house as I see wasps as beneficial. However, they had built a nest right beside the steps to my back deck. I didn't want anyone coming onto the deck to get stung, so I sprayed the nest from about 15 feet away, killing (I thought) all of the wasps.

Later that evening, as we were getting ready to walk down to my neighbor's for dinner, I went and stood next to the steps. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something flying toward me, and WHAM, he smacked me on the hand. Didn't get all of 'em!

[TwoForty]

So what do these nests in the ground look like? Is it just a little hole? I normally look down when hiking, but I have never noticed anything.

[Seeker]

didn't notice a big hornets' nest in a tree i was climbing once when i was about 12 or 13... got hit right above the eye (yes, just the one), but it swelled up to where i thought all the hair had fallen out of my eyebrow (it was just stretched out for a day or two)...

wandered into a yellow jacket nest once too, in the adirondacks. i was about 8 or 9, so i don't remember much, just getting stung a lot of times, but it wasn't as bad as some here have described...

[Fiddler]

So what do these nests in the ground look like? Is it just a little hole? I normally look down when hiking, but I have never noticed anything.

Don't know about hornets out East, on the trail or anywhere else. There are quite a few different kinds of them. But here (northern IL) you probably won't see an underground nest. You might see a hornet flying low to the ground, all of a sudden it's gone. Keep looking where you saw one disappear and you'll see 1 or 2 suddenly appear and fly away. Then look as close as you dare you can find a hole maybe big enough to stick your finger in, but don't stick it in. (for obvious reasons) Watch the hole and you can see them coming and going.

[Streamweaver]

My brother and I found out the hard way that yellow jackets also live under ground.We were walking near a small stream ,and all of the sudden the ground erupted like a guyser!! Im not kidding,it looked like a solid column of bees pouring out of the ground,and they didnt look happy!!! We managed to out distance most of them after about 1/4 mile and a dozen or so stings each.But there was one persistant bee that kept bugging us for another mile or soo,it really seemed to be interested in my brothers bright red hair!!

[neo]

no but i have had yellow jackets on a few occasions after me,i had them to fly down my shirt once,got stung over 50 times,had to get shots in the hospital that time neo

[middle to middle]

I know that bees use the sun to navigate and you are safe after the sun gors down. Good reason to hike at night in bee country. Tough trail going either way.

[Presto]

I was hiking the SHT with my wife when she yelled "ow", and looked down. It was at that moment that I saw the YJs appearing everywhere. We started running and dropped our trekking poles and packs in a sprint. I got nailed 4 times - my wife only got the one sting. After running, I looked down and saw 5 YJs on my socks trying to sting me. They failed through my thick socks and I have always been loyal to that brand of socks ever since.

So how many times can you get stung before it becomes an emergency situation? Anyone know? That was a creepy enough situation and I only took a handful of hits. It seems like at some point, your body would not be able to cope.

[clicker]

The worst was when I was day hiking on private property (I had permission) with my dog and he got into a underground bee nest. The swarm completely covered him and had stung him so many times he couldn't see and I had to wade into the fight and get him out. I had over 20 stings on my hands alone and had to carry him out.

[timhines]

You are a better man than me saving your dog.

I once walked into a swarming nest of yellow jackets that had been mowed over by a bush hog. I never ran so fast. i think i was hit 17 times. I stripped my clothes faster than a pole dance that had been given a $100 bill.

Take my advice, if you are using a weed whacker (weed eater, whatever you call it) the string does not spin fast enough to kill bees that are flying out of a nest in the ground. So don't try that.

My last advice, if you pour any fuel (such as gas) down a hole in a ground to kill the nest, don't get the bright idea that it would be funny to light it.

[Frolicking Dinosaurs]

I came around a corner on the Slickrock Creek trail in NC (near Wildcat Falls) and bumped a hornets nest about 20 yrs ago. I got stung about a dozen times before I hastily shed my pack and dove into a deep pool in the creek. The hornets didn't seem to like the cold water any better than I did

[TN_Hiker]

Never stung by hornets on the trail, but as a teenager I was bushhogging along a fence row and the light bar on the tractor ripped a nest apart. I was stung 12 or so times before jumping off the tractor and running like mad to the pond. The hornets gave up on me after that, but I now had a runaway tractor going across the field with the pto still churning. It took out about a 100 yards of barbwire fencing and a good section of my dad's garden before I finally worked up the nerve to jump back on tractor. I spent the rest of the day fixing fence and unwrapping barbwire from the bushhog. Needless to say, dad was not happy about my productivity that day.

[neo]

a hornets nest can not chase you neo

[EarthJourney]

Luckily.....I didn't disturb the big ole hornets nest just above me.

I was fishing on the Conasauga river in N. Ga. Working a nice little spot, had made several cast. For some reason I decided to look up above me and I had JUST been missing a freakin' big ole nest of hornets by about 6-9". I walked upstream a little ways and literally had to sit down think about how close I was to a truely life threatening disaster and regained my composure. Had I hit the nest it wouldn't have played out too well. I know (after the intial 30 stings) I would've dived in the river
and crawled on the botttom as far as I could. But, hornets are pretty determined and I'm sure they would've easily found me again as I came up for air. From that point I would've had ~3 mile mostly uphill hike to my car. Yellow jacket poison really does a number on me, not sure how the hornet toxins would affect me as I've never had the pleasure of a hornet sting!

Now - I check for them buggers before I start my manly casting technique!

[Streamweaver]

So what do these nests in the ground look like? Is it just a little hole? I normally look down when hiking, but I have never noticed anything.

Yeah it was just a hole ,about 6-8 inches in diam. Looked like it could have been an abandoned muskrat hole .There were so many yellow jackets it looked like a column of water shooting out of the ground!! I looked in the Audabon(sp) field guide and it mentioned yellowjackets living under ground,so it wasnt just a fluke.

[Footslogger]

This was a close call in PA during my 2003 thru. Walked into the woods to answer nature's call and almost walked right into it.

'Slogger

[Streamweaver]

This was a close call in PA during my 2003 thru. Walked into the woods to answer nature's call and almost walked right into it.

'Slogger

Yeah those Paper wasp nests are like concrete!! Once while hunting with my father and brothers,we came across an empty nest on the ground.Dad shot it with a 20ga shotgun and it barely did any damage.They make the nests by chewing up wood and mixing it with spit to form a paste.Must be some high test spit!!LOL