John Pepin, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Journal columnist

“Another challenge for the Green Hornet, his aide Kato and their rolling arsenal, the Black Beauty.” — Green Hornet TV show introduction

We moved to our new home last year and discovered, after not having been there very long, that we were sharing the property with a swarm of bald-faced hornets.

These hornets, known notoriously for their repetitive painful stings, had built one of their big gray cone-shaped swirl nests in our front yard.

The nest hung about 15 feet off the ground, attached to a nodding branch on one of the crabapple trees. My first thought was to be concerned for anyone getting close to the nest.

After I thought about it awhile, and looked around the property a little more, I decided not to do anything to try to remove the nest. True, it was in the front yard, but it was away from most of our activity except mowing the lawn and I would be doing that.

I could see remnants of nests from prior years still affixed to the underside of the garage roof and a tiny globe-shaped nest, about the size of a ping-pong ball, started on the main roof edge of the house.

In the gardening shed, I saw the previous owners had left us two full cans of wasp-killing spray. Lethal from a distance of at least 20 feet.

I decided that these creatures had certainly been here longer than we had and that there must be something they liked about this property, same as us. So, the nest stayed put.

I watched with interest as the female hornets worked to build the nest. I read that only the queens will survive over the winter, find a suitable nest location and start the nest-building and egg-laying process all over again in the spring.

The males do not do much more than wait around for opportunities to mate. No wonder the queens are buzzing mad. The hornets eat other insects and are thus considered beneficial.

If there were a nest hanging close to the front door, for example, I would call a pest professional to remove the nest at night, when most of the hornets are inactive. This is the recommended protocol.

However, there are methods that should never be recommended documented on the Internet, including using a 12-guage shotgun to blow a hornets’ nest to pieces, then donning a bee suit to avoid getting stung when you retrieve your cameras.

The man asks, “What is life if you can’t have a little fun once in a while?”

At least two other gentlemen documented their efforts to destroy a hornets’ nest using a drone, with cameras set up to record the action.

One man narrated the adventure, while his family sat nearby in their car.

“So, what I’m doing today is I’m going to try to eradicate, or at least mess with, some hornets enough to make them leave,” he said.

Because bald-faced hornets — identified by their black bodies and white markings on their faces — will attack and kill honeybees, this apiarist wanted to remove a nest built at the end of a pipe, not far from his cultivated bee colonies.

“They don’t like me talking, I can see that, so I’m going to back up,” he said. “The main tool I’m going to use is, this is my Action Drone AD-1 and I have a GoPro Hero 3 Black that I’m going to shove right in their face and see what they think about it.”

The man had set up a camera on a tripod nearby to record the action.

“My family is going to be sitting in the Yukon, so hopefully nobody gets stung because these suckers hurt bad,” he said.

With the sensitivity of a dentist’s drill, he uses the quad propeller blades of the drone to cut deep gashes into the sides of the nest, saying, “That’ll piss ’em off.”

On another pass at the nest he cuts almost all the way through the gray nest material made from chewed up wood and hornet saliva. With the sound of the drone buzzing in the air, the hornets attack the still camera.

They make a clicking noise as they hit and bounce off the lens. Eventually, the camera tips over, pulling tripod and all to the ground.

“So, the AD-1 did an amazing job of staying in the air. And there are hornet guts and hornet house parts all over this sucker,” the man said.

The 13-minute video has been viewed by nearly 5.5 million people since 2015.

He said hundreds of hornets were harmed during the filming, but the nest was rebuilt within 24 hours “so more videos are sure to come.”

Another man tried a variation on the same theme, also filming his escapade.

“I have been attacked by bald-faced Hornets in the past and figured the safest way to eradicate them was from behind the screen door while piloting my DJI Phantom 4 Pro,” he said. “My thought was that the suction from the props would draw them in and be chopped up. I proceeded to fly the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) near the nest, but the obstacle avoidance prevented me from getting close enough.”

Switching that off, the man claimed to have killed about 75 percent of the hornets, further provoking them to fly into the propeller blades by banging on the inside wall of his home. He said that a week later the rest of the hornets were gone.

Our nest in the crabapple tree was done in by a late summer thunderstorm when strong winds and a torrential rain shower left the structure soggy, sagging and broken apart, with most of the honeycombed contents laying on the ground.

I had approached the nest to within few feet several times to take photographs, and the lawn mower buzzed underneath on several occasions, with no defensive action taken by the hornets.

I guess that’s why this summer I decided to leave another nest that was being built by a queen in one of our outdoor lights at the edge of the patio. This time the nest was about 12 feet off the ground.

I watched the progress over the summer, from almost nothing to a flutelike structure to a substantial nest which is undoubtedly home to at least 400 hornets. Again, my riding lawn mower has been directly underneath the nest, but the hornets were not disturbed.

They also let me stand about 5 feet away on a step ladder to get some close-up looks and photos without any problems. We did discover the hornets did not like when we turned the backyard patio lights on.

We wondered whether this was because of the brightness of the light, the humming noise they make or maybe the heat thrown off by the bulb. In any case, the hornets emerged from their nest in the darkness, first one or two, then 10, 20 and more.

After a couple of minutes, I shut the lights off.

This nest has withstood winds and rain and has only continued to get larger. I had spent many days taking photographs to document the process, hoping to put together a photo series later this fall.

I have discovered I enjoy checking on the nest when I get up in the morning and when I come home from work. I am glad we decided to let the hornets live here too.

I also think we set a good example for the girls that you don’t automatically have to kill something you may fear or not understand.

I know with the autumn cycle clicking into place, it won’t be long before this hornet nest will soon be abandoned. Then I will take it down before winter comes.

My final photos in the sequence will likely show what remains inside.

I agree with one thing the shotgun guy said, “What is life if you can’t have a little fun once in a while?”

Editor’s note: John Pepin is the deputy public information officer for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula. Send correspondence to pepinj@michigan.gov or 1990 U.S. 41 South, Marquette, MI 49855.