What the hell flew into my bedroom last night?

[1dayatatime]

So it was a hot night and I had the bedroom window open when I was woken around midnight by something big and buzzing bashing around.

I am guessing it's a hornet but the bloody thing is over 3cm long and it took half a can of fly spray and 20 minutes to die.

Below it is a wasp for comparison of size.

Well there go two of our seriously declining native pollinators. Why did you need to kill them?

The Asian hornet has properly yellow legs, that’s a good indicator.

Did the regular wasp get killed in the cross fire or did you kill that one to use as a comparison

I’ve had a couple buzzing round the kitchen. Putting the light off and opening the door and activating the outside light got them to fly out. They are very attracted to light. Here’s mine which I think is also a European hornet

We've got them at ours they are so loud.. my DH caught and released a few (8 or so) took them well away from house and every time nearly all flew back immediately which was scarier than your usual wasp.

We've been killing them to, I'm a veggie and kill very few things but these things are beasts.

I've got some regular dead house flies knocking around somewhere . Quite a collection here 😀

Because it was midnight and I was completely freaking out. If I'd had a flamethrower handy I would probably have used that as well.

@Rounee

"And loving the fact you have spare dead insects in stock for size comparisons"

+++

Maybe I should post a new thread on my interesting collection of dead insects.

Actually it was more about freaking out a midnight at the size of the thing petrified it would get tangled in my hair and spraying fly spray with abandon like a mad banshee that I could hardly sleep in the room again but daren't open the window again.

So no not really about instagram or other social media.

Do you live in the south, it was on TV about them about a week ago, either on This Morning or the programme on BBC in the mornings, I think they mentioned Sussex

Could it be a hornet hoverfly? They are actually harmless but in the middle of the night, I appreciate its hard to think.

Do not try to squash it. An angry hornet is very aggressive. Otherwise they’re fairly noisy but not very prone to attacking. They hunt day and night and kill bees so I kill them rather than set them free.

Are these critters more prevalent further south? I don't think I've ever seen anything like that up here.

For the record I absolutely did not kill the smaller bee and never would. It just happened to be randomly lying dead by the window sill.

Rather not disclose where I live but yes in the South near M4.

It also said on the TV that they were very worried about the bee population with these hornets as they kill them and eat them

I'm assuming you're vegan. Just curious where you draw the line. If your child had nits what would you do? Any suggestions for fruit flies?

@Desecratedcoconut

"I'd be cautious about dispelling that much fly spray in a room that you are about to sleep in though. It will be bloody toxic for your lungs"

++

On reflection you are absolutely right about the toxic risk of that much fly spray in a confined space.

But in my demented petrified state I wasn't thinking that logically 😀

Shudder

I'll never understand why people are needlessly unpleasant. What did you gain from this?

my parents migrated to Australia when I was very young. The first 3 days we were there my oldest sister let a loud scream gibbering there is a enormous spider size of my hand. DM and DD "no way spiders dont come that big....." dm was soring out the washing next day and out her apron pockets (dm wore pinnys than) out came this tarantula sized spider, ddad chasing after it with fly spray which was completely ineffective, the thing just acted a bit drunk and raced away, We kept coming up against on the veranda for weeks. We got used to a lot of strange insects (giant ant like things and a variety of poisonous spiders etc) I still dont like things that bite me though (yuck horse flies)

That's huge 😱

Because I'd never understand why you'd come on here and be proud of the fact you killed something and it took 20 minutes to die? I'm not saying you wouldn't panic, I'm not saying you wouldn't wonder what you'd killed. Just killing something with fly spray and it taking 20 minutes to die is so horrible, I don't know what you're getting out of it other than social media likes?

Asian hornet! If you are in London Battersea Zoo are also doing a survey to track the spread.

It's MN, there are no likes on here, what are you on about.

No definitely didn't kill that one - just found it dead by the window.

To be clear I am not some "insect big game hunter" that kills stuff for fun and then randomly kills others just for size comparison.

I was simply very shit scared in the middle of the night.