Story time....
When I did professional landscaping, there were times when there wasn't any grunt-work to be done, so the boss would send me over to his mom's place with the riding mower.
Now, his mom was the quintessential grandmother of the neighborhood, always invited me in for lemonade and cookies, house hadn't changed from the '50's, you get the idea. I really enjoyed those days and didn't mind going back through and weed-whacking around her prize garden (couldn't get too close with the mower).
In the back of her place, she had these immense pine trees whose boughs hung over the lawn by a bit. I decided that, rather than come back with the weed-whacker, I could just duck around or let the boughs hit me in the chest. No big deal. The needles were a good deal softer than the evergreen bushes I was accustom to planting....
I should stop and explain here that we planted a hell of a lot of "techny arborvitae" (evergreen bushes). The ones we used were babies and because of their dimensions, you basically had to "hug" them in order to drop them into the ground. This resulted in welts all over our arms because those particular needles were razor-sharp. I naturally expected the pine trees wouldn't be nearly as bad.
I mention this as it explains my extremely delayed reaction time to what would happen next....It also explains my hatred for "techny's".
As I let a bough hit me in the chest, I thought, "Wow, these pine needles hurt a lot more than I thought they would." Then I noticed the cloud of hornets flying about me, stinging me every chance they had.
Thankfully, the riding mower had a dead-man's switch where (I estimate that the developers of that product envisioned this very scenario) if you were surrounding by a cloud of angry, flying, stinging things and you leaped off the seat, the drive motor would instantly disengage. This was good because at that moment I didn't really care if it stayed the course and crashed right through her garage.
I ran yelling and cussing a blue streak until I got 'round to the front of the house and the damned things stopped following me. My boss's mom was already waiting out front as she had heard the commotion. To her credit (bless her), she didn't bat an eye. Once she realized what had happened, she went straight into the house for rubbing alcohol (I would have preferred straight whiskey) and cotton balls to treat my stings. I'm honestly surprised that her ears didn't turn red and fall off from the unique combinations of words I had used up until that moment.
In the end, 27 stings and one very pissed off me. Her grandson, J., several years my senior, grabbed a can of Raid and was about to go after the little buggers, but I grabbed it from him and told him, "It's personal". I'd like to say that I left them alone, after all, I was invading their space, but I was angry. I hosed 'em down. They'll never bother anyone ever again.
HINDSIGHT: Yes, I should have checked the boughs. I should have looked for nests and such. But I didn't. And I learned my lesson. And because of the "techny's" role, I'll never plant those damnable things again.