Originally Posted by Sir Real

Hornet related story.
At one point in time, I had strung wire around the top rail of our horse paddocks and attached a standard "electric fence" device to them. There was, unknown to us, a hornet nest/hive in the ground at the far edge of the property, and the fence and wire was just above it.

I had first noticed something weird when I had wandered towards that back corner, and saw a mound of dead hornets on the ground. Up on the wire was a very angry swarm of hornets furiously attacking the wire. The electrified wire is, of course, insulated from metal pole, but the hornets were swarming around the base of the conductor and completing the circuit between the wire and the fence. Every 10-20 seconds, it would arc, killing a handful of hornets, which dropped to the ground.

I can only surmise that some improbable event caused the hornets to mass on the conductor, starting the first kill. Pheromones, or some other hornet-related trigger, caused the rest to go into full defense mode.

The end result was many hours of entertainment with friends and family. Of course, the nest/hive was soon depleted.