He was well protected by a beekeeping suit, and armed with a shovel to hack away at the monstrous hornets’ nest. “We got here, what I would say, is the granddaddy of all hornets’ nests,” Jude Verret, a Louisiana exterminator, said as he headed into a shed in Patterson, La., to clear a nest of Europan Yellow Jackets. Beyond physical protection, Verret must have been armed with quite a bit of courage, given the sheer size of the nest — and the million or more hornets he said were swarming around inside.