The ladders were positioned earlier in the day and secured soundly. I also had a neighbour footing the bottom of the ladders, for Justin.
I’m about to turn 70 Years, and confess that I’m increasingly uneasy about the prospect of climbing ladders, but when needs must…
Well I am 81 but it was only last year that I stopped my annual August job of walking up the roof to clean the chimney downwards. Since then, although we no longer use the fire but it is there if the leccy fails, I get a man in. A once a year cost of around €80. 
That get up reminds me of our lads ppe before i started 20 yrs ago 
Managed to track down the photo of the earlier mentioned interesting nest for all you budding pestied
I’m a bit surprised at that, most nests are golf-tennis ball size nests. Great suit though!!
The nest filled the alcove in the wall, so I’m guessing at least a foot high, 6"- 7" wide, and maybe 6" deep? I know memories can be unreliable, but they were most definitely much larger than a tennis ball - next time I’m up there I’ll take a tape measure.
The nest at the top of the walnut tree two years later was a similarish size, but then again they both had a large bee colony only a minute or two away at most to support them. The Maire did say that they were the largest nests that he had seen in both cases. Then again, we do like our grub in the Perigord.
I didn’t take any other photo’s unfortunately.
That very first AH hive was considerably smaller.
Our neighbour had a huge nest at the top of one of his trees, must have been around 3ft x 2ft?
Not this year though!
Wasps and hornets ‘grow a new’ nest every year. They’re all just starting out at the moment.
Ahh now I follow, we are talking current season and not end of previous year mature nest? I thought, based on what was being said that it might have been a different creatures nest.
How to get a swarm of multi-coloured and very very annoyed frélons!!
I had to have the subtitles on for that one and even then I struggled to catch what he was talking about.
I’ve just come back from a 15 hour day trip to Paris by train, to speak with the Director and inventor of the insecticide paintball. I use this method a lot for treating AH nests. The product active ingredient and the shell casing are all biodegradable.
In every country, chemicals and their method of application need to be approved. There is no 1 european rule; France differs from Italy who differs from Spain etc X every Europrean (including EU) states. The cost of each licence is over 100K€. So, whilst the paintball and its application is authorised for use in France, the chances are that it will never be authorised for use in the UK.
I was on BBCTV SE news last year demonstrating the paintball treatment. The trouble is I’m alone fighting DEFRA and the NBU to use this method.
I’m disliked by Jersey and the UK government because I call a spade a spade (I’ve never been ‘corporate’) and I have ruffled too many UK governmental departments’ feathers. I’m also banned from Jersey and many of their AH forums.
I’m adored by UK Pest Controllers for the very same reason!!
Yep a tough world for those that just wont knuckle under and accept “its the way we have always done it” and never move forward in their tedious little civil servant ways. They through hugely expensive barriers up to prevent progress. Its why so much developed in the UK ends up being developed in other countries.
Just keep pushing Rob or hire someone used to dealing with gov officialdome and red tape,
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round…
But
Ha ha ha (eventually)
They’d rather take their advice from someone who grew an AH nest in his bathroom for a season to observe it. Apart from not washing, the AH still have to eat.
Or who used a fireboat tug to jet a nest off a cliff and wonder why a tiny rock off in the size of Marseilles in the English Channel is overrun with AH.
I might have called them 'f*****g idiots or something equally non offensive (but correct) then I got banned/monitored from all AH groups. ‘Advised not to visit’ the little tax haven.
I’ve tried and offered to help. I’m getting a coplex because I refuse to close my eyes and blindly back-slap.
Besides, France is my home now. The bees buzz, humans are alive, honey still flows. Not that you’d know it !!
Nitpick, but that’s a myth. It was known that the Earth was a sphere in the 5th C BC, and no intelligent person in middle ages Europe thought that the Earth was flat.
True indeed - but what they didn’t realise that there was a continent and a huge ocean between Europe and China if you sailed west, instead of being sensible and hopping on an Airbus A380 to fly east from Heathrow to Shanghai…
Columbus’ mission was actually a huge flop in terms of what he was trying to achieve.
OTOH he found sugar, some nice beaches, and some Mesoamericans who could be enslaved or killed off with smallpox.
I was referring to the song!!
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus
When he said the world was round
They all laughed when Edison
Recorded sound
They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother
When they said that man could fly
Why they told Marconi wireless was a phony
It’s the same old cry
They laughed at me wanting you
Said I was reaching for the moon
But, oh, you came through
And now they’ll have to change their tune
They all said we never could be happy
They laughed at us and how
But ho, ho, ho
Who’s got the last laugh now?
They all laughed at Rockefeller Center
And now they’re fighting to get in
They all laughed at Whitney and his cotton gin
They all laughed at Fulton and his steamboat
Hershey and his chocolate bar
Ford and his Lizzie, kept the laughters busy
That’s how people are
Why they laughed at me wanting you
Said it would be, “Hello, Goodbye”
But, oh, you came through
And now they’re eating humble pie
They all said we’d never get together
Darling, let’s take a bow, for ho, ho, ho
Who’s got the last laugh? Hee, hee, hee
Let’s at the past laugh, ha, ha, ha
Who’s got the last laugh now? 
Now then, Who’s got the last laugh now? 
Indeed, that was the original idea, to reach China without using the overland route, where various states along the way would levy taxes on goods coming from China to Europe and bandits were very common. The sea route past the Cape of Good Hope was also very long. Easier, they thought to sail West and get there with less bother. How wrong they were. Just like the search for the fabled North West Passage.
I thought you were, as I recognised the opening line of the song, but being a bit of a nerd, I couldn’t let it pass without comment
Nerding is fine. I’m offen referred to as being pidantic, podentek, padontique, whatever the flippin’ word is 
Bon week-end/fin de semaine
Wasps in a nest I can cope with as it is usually a matter of calling in the local exterminator.
What drives me mad are those horrible ones that find a small opening, lay their stuff and close it up with mud. How many times, I meticulously clean up an engine ready for a rebuild and despite covering it, there are always some of these grubs in threaded holes that are a nightmare to clean…
So I religiously kill a wasp on site - maybe cruel, but there it is. Plus, I just do not see the point in the wretched things.