Subject: Re: Help-Hornets!

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 14:28:16 EDT

1.  Have you had drought conditions.   Often insects attack fruit and some 
kinds of vegetables when moisture is scarce.

2.  I'll swap you--you give us all your hornets, you take all our fire ants.

3)  Sounds like a shortage of skunks.

4)  And a shortage of ducks.

5)  If they are ground nesters, burn out the nests.  It is a bit hazardous to 
do this with hanging nests, unless you have something approaching a flame 
thrower.  (There ARE agricultural flame throwers sold.)  Always burn them at 
night, and always in such a way that hornets have to pass through flame to 
leave the nest.  This removes their wings and they fall back into the hole 
(or onto you if you are burning a hanging nest from underneath).  If it is 
not absolutely clear to you how to go about burning out a nest, forget it.  
These suckers really pack a wallop when they sting.

I wouldn't worry about taking steps to reduce the population.  Obviously it 
is in excess.  While the hornets are beneficial as predators of other 
insects, you can have too much of a good thing.  (Unless you happen to be 
Mark Twain or Mae West.)

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since 
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses, 
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and annual correspondence 
courses via email.  Copyright, 1998, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O. Box 52, 
Sparr FL 32192 USA  Internships. [email-masked]  

We don't have time to rush.

A list by topic of all Yankee Permaculture titles may be found at 
http://csf.colorado.edu/perma/ypc_catalog.html
Elfin Permaculture programs are listed at the Eastern Permaculture Teachers 
assn home page: http://home.ptd.net/~artrod/epta/eptahmp.html
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In a message dated 9/7/99 3:57:35 PM, [email-masked] writes:

<<Believe it or not, this is not more filosifizin' but a request for
practical advice. Briefly: this year we are overrun by bald-faced hornets
that are eating nearly all my fruit before I can get to it, and I'm
wondering if this is just a short phase in the ecological development of my
evolving landscape, or if I should implement some strategy to bring the
hornets back into balance. I don't mind hornets, I just want some fruit.
  The long version (you knew there would be a long version, right?): We've
lived on this south-facing, summer-dry Oregon hillside, covered mostly with
doug fir and madrone, for 6 years. The fruit trees I planted  are just
beginning to bear (most are in young guilds), and suddenly this year,
billions of bald-faced or white-faced hornets have showed up (Vespula spp.;
not bees or wasps but true hornets). We've always had yellowjackets in
summer (which the hornets eat in a very gruesome display, plucking them
from the air, snapping off the wings, head, and abdomen, and munching the
protein-rich thorax while the legs still wriggle), and we've had hornet
nests nearby, but never any problem with them. But I can't even get to my
fruit; the hornets completely cover the peaches and figs (and we have lots
of figs!) with a writhing black mass as they devour them, even spending the
night on them, and have made harvesting grapes and plums a challenge as I
must gently sweep 2 to 5 hornets from each piece of fruit before picking
it. I'm hoping that the problem is simply that I've offered a new food
source that is still in fairly short supply (about 6 young stone-fruit
trees and 3 figs are bearing, with more trees to come) and thus there is a
temporary burst in population that will die down when natural predators and
controls ramp up to speed.
  Should I do anything or wait it out? Has anyone been through this before?
As more fruit comes on will this be less of a problem or will the hornets
continue to multiply-yikes!-in response to new food? What are hornets'
natural controls and can I take steps to encourage their presence? Why
isn't the planet waist deep in hornets? What's a nice permacultural,
ecological approach to this?>>

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