Yellow jackets

At the hospital they quit counting the stings at 80, with some still falling out of my hair, armpits and beard.

A wet and dry vacuum with about a half load of real soapy water in it works well on a cool nite. I have never had any experience with nest in the ground. For good long term trapping the glass jars that have the one way lids for yellow jackets work well. Even here in the desert they catch a lot of wasp. Just takes a little raw meat in the jar to get them started.

My brother in law walks close to the diving board at our pool. I tell him careful, there is a big wasp nest underneath.

What does he do? He kicks the diving board. "Oh, yeh look at all of them," he says as he walks right up to the corner where the nest is. Bam, Bam, Bam gets stung like crazy.

After he sprays the nest, his excuse was that "he wanted to give the wasps a fair fight"

I wouldn't use gas 'cause of all this mtbe nonsense.

It's hard on shellfish, not vertibrates. Amazing what you can learn with a little research.

My favorate spray is Spectracide. The green can stuff you see at Home Depot and such. By far, it's one of the best I've found currently on the market. I use it on aerial nests. My best brag about it would be attacking a bald faced hornets nest from directly below on a ladder about 20 feet up, no bee suit on. The hornets were flying out, and falling all over me, dead and dying. I didn't get stung.

My favorite ground treatment is Sevin. Powder the hole and the area immediately around it. Place a board over the entrance so the critters have to walk through the powder. The nest will be dead in a few days. I only do this on my own nests, because it's lazy and easy. For commercial customers, I dig nests out which necessitates suiting up and spraying. That's a pain and I don't recommend it for you.

Work at night by flashlight. They *generally* don't fly. Don't mistake that for they can't fly or won't fly. And they are quite capable of walking up your legs to sting you. So work quickly, smoothly and with as little light as you can.

I don't have much experience with yellow jackets, but I have lots of wasps around my place. Some are black, some are red, some are blue, some are black and yellow. I use Raid or Black Flag wasp and hornet spray on them. Man, it knocks them right out of the air, they fall to the ground and die immediately. The residue is supposed to kill returning wasps, but I don't think it really works all that well.

My local Co-op also carries an insecticide that they call "Demon". I don't know what is in it, but it also wipes the wasps out.

So, if you haven't already tried it, you might try one can of wasp & hornet spray to see if it gives any good results.

Good luck,

Tom in TN

I've see YJ traps at the farm store by the fly control stuff. You'll need to go to the better farm store.

I don't think they can see in the dark, but test them at your own risk.

This is the best response I've seen, so far!!

Steve

AND no matter what anyone does, do it after dusk when they've settled in for the night, otherwise buzz, buzz, buzz, YOUCH, YOUCH, YOUCH.

Mark