Found this behind the insulation in the bedroom today.
Wow … have you noticed Hornet activity in the house… ??
Yes, there were a load around a security light one evening, about 50 of
them!
We used to have them in our bedroom every summer… they were nesting in a chimney shared with next door… and used to find their way into our room and waft about towards the French windows and the sunlight…
Never got stung… they seemed almost indifferent to our presence… unlike the wasps and every other biting insect…
We had to completely seal the chimney on our side… to stop them visiting us… 
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A few weeks ago Asian Hornets started appearing in our Raspberries. Sue swears they were giving her the evil eye when she was picking them…Neither of us fancied aggravating them so I cut them down. We can see a nest 50 metres away at the top of a tree, could well be them. Anyone fancy a trip up a ladder?
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I understand that Asian Hornets are aggressive…unlike the other gentle giants…
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We recently had these fellows in our bedroom - a little inconvenient not being able to open the window.
Well done James, did you destroy it yourself or was it already dead?
Matt, those are bees. Better off leaving them until Spring before contacting a beekeeper.
Next, myth busting, Asian hornets are no more aggressive than European hornets. They will sting you if you annoy them but they don’t attack unless provoked.
In the Cher I’m destroying about 5 hornet nests a day, 2 of those are usually Asian hornets.
If you change your outside spots to yellow light instead of white light, you’ll get far fewer hornets, they are less attracted to the yellow light.
Below is an article in a trade pest control magazine in the uk about Asian hornets, interesting regarding technical and field experts (although I did have to edit the technical aspect as there were glaring errors before editing!).
pest mag sept17 Asian hornets.pdf (303.6 KB)
Ha ha… wait until Spring before you can open the window…???.
Bee numbers are greatly reduced in this area, this year… and the bee-keepers are quite concerned about it…I reckon my locals would be very happy to help me out, if this lot landed on my windows…
There is a greater risk that the bees won’t survive if you lift them now.
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Hi Rob
Yes, I destroyed it myself with a can of Raid, luckily it was in an enclosed area so I was able to saturate the nest by spraying safely through a hole I made in the insulation. Funny you should mention the white lights, I recently replaced a halogen with a cold LED outside light and they were all over it a few days ago, it’s actually what alerted us to their presence. I have never seen them near the old halogen. I wonder if it’s the colour temperature of the lamp or perhaps the heat that keeps them clear too.
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Found a small (large turnip sized) nest in the garage a couple of months ago, a good dose of RAID sorted it - the inhabitants didn’t seem very aggressive as I almost bumped into it before noticing it to no great response. I think that there is a regular sized Asian hornet as well as the giant - these were “ordinary” wasp sized but blacker rather than the common wasps you find in the UK which are predominantly yellow.
Mr B sell some stuff designed for tackling nests which is supposed to stun and kill the wasps very quickly so that they have dropped before they can sting you but I think that I would leave anything larger to the professionals. If you do have a large nest with fairly aggressive defenders one wasp sting can lead to a chain reaction as a pheromone is released (especially if you kill the wasp) and a large number of stings can be fatal - I think Robert is definitely the expert on this one 
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Yup, those critters sound like an Asian hornet nest.
Myth buster II, giant asian hornets are not in France.
As my article for Pestmag says, it’s the difference in quantity of the number o finsects in a nest:
Queen bee lays 2000 eggs a day (approx)
Q [common/German] wasp 200 eggs a day
Q Eh 50 eggs per day
Q Ah multiple queens laying 50 eggs a day
Q termite by the way lays up to 40,000 epd.
By the size of nests I’m currently treating, there are a lot of big nests out there. James’
nest photo’d above would have contained abiut 500 hornets, including the larvae.
Raid is ok but in order to destroy the nest, you need to kill the queen (the French love it when I tell them that!). Which is why I use an insect powder and never aerosols. Otherwise the nest will deminish but not die.
So, be careful out there!
Rob
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Not sure of the answer regarding heat, but as with a lot of vectors, they see in ultra violet so a white light is more visible/attractive to them.
Incidentally only European hornets can fly at night, the Asians need to be tucked up in bed before dark.
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Actually one of Robert’s comments resonates - I was puzzled why the nest was so small in July but I guess it could have been a “secondary” nest if the queen had left an earlier colony. It was small enough that I was able to saturate it with Raid which should have got the queen - certainly when I was back for August there was no sign of activity - just a lot of dead hornets.
As to ultra-violet light attracting them - LED “white” lamps are actually blue or violet with a mix of phosphors which luminesce to give the appearence of white but they tend to have a lot of output at the violet/blue end of the spectrum compared with incandescent lamps so I guess are likely to be quite attractive to insects which generally “see” much better than we do at shorter wavelengths.
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If they are really Asian hornets the fire brigade will normally remove it for free …
They might if I could prove that it is indeed the Asian Hornets nest. But there’s only one way to find out and it won’t be me climbing the ladder…
Myth busting III. Most regions in France the pompiers no longer treat Asian hornets and you usually have to pay nowadays.
"Sorry can’t attend the house fire down the road, our ladders are being used to remove ahornet nest"
Please don’t expect the pompiers to do the work. They will usually have a list of private enterprises they recommend.
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Even the experts get it wrong!
Make sure you’re bee suit is fully closed before treating nests. Last night I was kissed by a friendly wasp.
Last time I looked like this I forgot to buy Mrs M flowers on Valentines Day, doh!
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Then we were lucky…as last year we had a nest and they removed it for free…
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