Hornet Attack!

Last month, as the temperatures started to increase, we quickly noticed an increasingly growing number of hornets/wasps flying around our backyard.  We took a look around the house and sprayed where we saw a few small nests, but these were also nests I was positive I sprayed last year and never got around to knocking down.  Later that day it was obvious these were old nests as the number of hornets/wasps had not decreased at all.  We next started watching the hornets/wasps and found them congregating around the deck and a wooden structure in the backyard play area.  We lifted up the wooden structure and found two large, active nests.  Then I took apart a small area of the deck I couldn't access without taking apart, and found another large, active nest.  Three large nests in total, shown below next to my finger.

That took care of a good number of the hornets/wasps, but several hours later we kept seeing them flying around.  The house next to us is currently empty and has a shed in the backyard, adjacent to our backyard.  I went around the the shed and noticed several hornets/wasps coming out of the shed.  Fortunately the shed was unlocked and I opened it up and found five more nests of similar size.  Yikes!  

I think we've taken care of the problem now as I don't see any flying around our backyard now.  It was an interesting adventure.  My 6 year old was particularly interested in the nests, which admittedly are very cool in the absence of hornets/wasps!  She was so interested that she wanted to be part of finding them in the shed, but I had to put my foot down and tell her no on that one!  Too risky!  In the end we knocked out eight nests of similarly large size and no one in the family was stung!  Now that is a success story!