Watch out for those bald face hornets!

Treetopflyer

Treetopflyer

Been here much more than a while
Location
Coastal N.J
I was removing a maple on thursday, luckily just made my final pitch and set my tie in point.. before they realized I was in their world. I looked right saw a swarm coming from a very small nest that was baseball size or smaller at the tips of a limb , I was stung twice in the forehead and in the arm . As I was rapping out of the tree the chainsaw caught up in some brush and flung around to slice up my brake hand with mostly a puncture wounds from the chain and small slice on my wrist.. everyone who witnessed would've swore I fell out of the tree as that's how fast I bombed out on my trusty bulldoggbone... if I would've been in the changeover and not had t.i.p. set who knows how much worse I would've got it.. So word to the wise keep your eyes peeled this time of year if your in the northeast for even the smallest little nests , shake trees up that are very thick and never stop inspecting .. Stay safe out there climbers!
 
Ouch! Those buggers are bad news. Cutting boundary lines, I have been stung by just about every flying insect there is, including a bumble bee, but the bald face hornet is worse. At least I could run, and in the case of yellow jacks in my hair, I prefer to pinch them into oblivion (very quickly)
 
Not to derail but whatever happened to the murder hornets? Haven't heard anymore about them. I think the covid bumped them down a few slots but they were really talking about them for a few days.
 
I got super lucky earlier this week, I had set my line in a huge river birch which had a small white pine growing underneath it that I had to kinda climb through on my ascent. (Looking back at it, I heard buzzing as I headed up and somehow didn't think anything of it.) Then, as I started chucking branches, I really disturbed the hive and we eventually found two bald face hornet nests in that one little tree. Somehow they didn't go after anyone on the ground or look up as I was a sitting duck 50' up needing to change my tie in because my original bail out was basically on the hive. Oh and these were more like basketball sized
 
Benjo75 said:
Not to derail but whatever happened to the murder hornets? Haven't heard anymore about them. I think the covid bumped them down a few slots but they were really talking about them for a few days.
Click to expand...
I haven't ran into them , I've heard of them .. Dont know much about them, but after working in trees for near a couple decades I've been lit up by bald faced with paper nest hornets on quite a few occasions over the years in ocean county jersey shore area. I respect and fear them more than almost anything in this business.. every august never fails. This was a good reminder for me , I was very lucky .. if I had set my anchor literally seconds later I would been proper FUCKED hornet style ..
 
stheis004 said:
I got super lucky earlier this week, I had set my line in a huge river birch which had a small white pine growing underneath it that I had to kinda climb through on my ascent. (Looking back at it, I heard buzzing as I headed up and somehow didn't think anything of it.) Then, as I started chucking branches, I really disturbed the hive and we eventually found two bald face hornet nests in that one little tree. Somehow they didn't go after anyone on the ground or look up as I was a sitting duck 50' up needing to change my tie in because my original bail out was basically on the hive. Oh and these were more like basketball sized
Click to expand...
Ya know it's funny this tree I was removing suffered large storm damage and the homeowner said to me a nest came down in the branches with the storm.. I didn't think much of it , but after finding another nest I wondered if they quickly rebuilt in same tree .. I didn't think 2 hives could coexist so closely but your story makes me suspicious of that theory ..
 
Jeff Jepson works in a part of Minnesota with a lot of birches. Prime nesting spots for all of these nasties

One thing that they do to wake up the nest before climbing is unique I think

They look then shake the tree with throwline or rope. Lastly they start a saw then place the bottom of the saw against the tree a pop the throttle a few times. This has rousted some nests in trees

They reschedule the work for fall after a killing frost
 
We grow a lot of figs and the bald face hornets love the ripe ones. The will fly into you as a warning when on the figs. They are quite terrifying and probably 3 dozen or so on a tree at one time. They get drunk acting when feeding on the over ripe and fermenting figs. Neither one of us have been stung yet but she picks most of the figs.
 
I was in a Birch the other day. Nothing happened while I was in the tree but after during cleanup there were something halfway between wasp and a very small bee buzzing around near the ground. They left me alone at first but then one followed me about 15 feet and settled and stung my elbow. Intense pain for 10 to 20 minutes, big subside, but then little remnant jabs of pain as I flexed my elbow. No sudden welt, just tiny red mark. But then my elbow slowly swole up round shaped for two days with a localized harder region an inch or so diameter. Any idea what those might have been? In post analysis I was up the tree for another hour after the nest must have come down and they never came after me that whole time.
 
Benjo75 said:
Not to derail but whatever happened to the murder hornets? Haven't heard anymore about them. I think the covid bumped them down a few slots but they were really talking about them for a few days.
Click to expand...
They are now confirmed in Washington state.. Whatcom County (next one over)
 
Treetopflyer said:
I was removing a maple on thursday, luckily just made my final pitch and set my tie in point.. before they realized I was in their world. I looked right saw a swarm coming from a very small nest that was baseball size or smaller at the tips of a limb , I was stung twice in the forehead and in the arm . As I was rapping out of the tree the chainsaw caught up in some brush and flung around to slice up my brake hand with mostly a puncture wounds from the chain and small slice on my wrist.. everyone who witnessed would've swore I fell out of the tree as that's how fast I bombed out on my trusty bulldoggbone... if I would've been in the changeover and not had t.i.p. set who knows how much worse I would've got it.. So word to the wise keep your eyes peeled this time of year if your in the northeast for even the smallest little nests , shake trees up that are very thick and never stop inspecting .. Stay safe out there climbers!
Click to expand...

We got em in the PNW TOO! Those fuckers go for you’re eyes. Worst I ever got it was 6 times on the left side of my face. I had one stuck under my forestry shield.
 
Wasps/hornets aren't too much of a problem in my area, but I've been hit a few times. Once I was doing a hedge from a ladder and got stung in the face twice by bald-face hornets, and I've stepped on ground-nests of yellow jackets while cutting and gotten half a dozen stings. The bald-face hurt way more, felt like getting shot in the face, but the pain went away quickly. With yellow-jackets, it hurt and then the area stayed sore for 2-3 days. Just another thing to be aware of when working in trees, and a reason to always be ready to rappel out of a tree quickly.
 
The wasps that make paper nests have pretty good tasting larvae, if you can get them when they are still young and iridescent. Sorry you got stung Aron, that's never fun.
 
Bart_ said:
I was in a Birch the other day. Nothing happened while I was in the tree but after during cleanup there were something halfway between wasp and a very small bee buzzing around near the ground. They left me alone at first but then one followed me about 15 feet and settled and stung my elbow. Intense pain for 10 to 20 minutes, big subside, but then little remnant jabs of pain as I flexed my elbow. No sudden welt, just tiny red mark. But then my elbow slowly swole up round shaped for two days with a localized harder region an inch or so diameter. Any idea what those might have been? In post analysis I was up the tree for another hour after the nest must have come down and they never came after me that whole time.
Click to expand...
Sounds to me like ground hornets/yellow jackets.
 
Climbing arborist has a pretty chilling podcast of a female arborist who had a pretty bad injury due to bald faced hornets and poor communication with srt anchor
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New threads New posts

Back
Top Bottom