Hah hah hah...oh, my, you reminded me of my own nickname when I was a kid! :) I think my husband still secretly thinks that about many of my finds (yet he lets me stew intersting skulls in the garage and has even supported the idea of managing a colony of dermestid beetles - what a guy)! I can't help you with this one, dirtgirl - my guess would be that perhaps the best thing to do would be to open it and pump some insecticide into the bag, then seal it up again. I don't think cold temperatures will do it alone. And you're right, why take a chance? Merry Christmas to all (except the wasps, I guess)

Ah yes, the things mothers will put up with. Good thing I always had dad as my accomplice. Of course there were distinct advantages to having a nature lover in the house. I will not forget hearing my mother screaming at the top of her lungs for me to come QUICK to the house and thinking something horrible had happened and taking off at a dead run, expecting to find dad having fallen and hit his head or something along those lines. I rushed into the house heaving and panting only to find mom brandishing a broom handle at the washing machine like some crazy-in-the-head samurai. She had come around the corner of the utility room and almost trippped over a 5-foot rat snake in the doorway, which then headed for sanctuary under the washer.
Guess that might have been the one time that I know of that a snake was loose in our house without me being directly involved, although I certainly had a hand in its leaving.
And I got a free crash course on washing machine anatomy.

Dirgirl,
Is that nest something they would have used next year?

My mom will never forgive me for the time that Iggy, my school's 5' long iguana that would come home with me over breaks, got loose from his aquarium and decided to take a nighttime stroll. He managed to get downstairs and parked himself behind the toilet - where mom somehow did not notice him until he crawled out onto her feet while she was, um, engaged. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my life and mom survived the experience, although I think reinstating corporal punishment crossed her mind.

Catherine, sounds like this nest would be doomed during a normal stream year, so dirtgirl is just hastening the inevitable.

lol Jill........at least your mom was in a good place, for such a surprise!

P.S.
I found one of those nests up in a hickory tree 2 years ago. It was the first one I'd seen in the 23 years here. I was hoping it would fall down whole, but unfortunately, it came apart before it fell. It was such a neat structure.

found a site which explains all of this.

answers:
larvae will not hatch
the mild odor will go away soon

see the link though -

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/iiin/bhornets.html

To me, watching a hornet lay down a fresh stripe of chewed wood pulp rates right up there with spiders doing their web chores every evening and cicadas emerging: it's something that takes an incredibly long time to observe but so totally engrossing that time almost seems suspended.
I have always found the nests fascinating, despite the fact that they are seldom at an elevation for easy viewing. I have found four very large and complete ones in my life; the others were simply the tattered remains of those that had weathered a hard winter or caught the eye of someone less appreciative of their engineering. Two years ago I noticed a large number of hornets visiting our old wooden pumphouse, a relic of the days before we had city water and a bonanza of good building material. I tried and tried to follow each successive hornet deeper into the woods to find out where they were all headed ( I hear this is an old settler's trick for locating a bee tree)but I eventually lost them. It was not until late that winter when all the leaves were long gone that I found it, high in the top of a spindly tree---elm, I think it was. The wind had whipped the tree tops all around and the nest was slowly being peeled of its layers. Every so often a hike in that direction would turn up another section of nest.
I wonder if the insects do a good job of repair when it happens ear;y in the year? I will have to check out your link, jillhudock. I suspect there might be some good reading there.

I do know, however, that I did rob some creatures of a possible resource by bringing it inside: I have noticed wrens roosting in the holes of winter nests so they do provide shelter (wouldn't be surprised to find lady bugs and other overwintering creatures tucked in the crevices as well) and I will bet you my best hiking boots that those wrens, as well as woodpeckers and nuthatches and so on would do their best to get at these tasty sleepers when the snows blow and calories are scarce.

The carolina wrens always peck through the mud daubers nests all over our house. They don't seem to have much to eat here in the winter, so I'm always glad to see them doing that.