Wasps. No owey yet but need to deal with them.

Have a old Cab over Ford truck I am stripping to resell. We pulled the grain box off yesterday and when I drove it out of buddies shop and parked there was a small swarm of wasps buzzing around. Looked pretty positive there was a nest or two in one of the nooks or crannies in the cab.

Couldn't find it so can't soak it with spray directly. Anybody have a idea how to deal with this? Is there a product we could fog the whole truck with?

Thanks

How about a flea bomb like you would use inside your house?

My brother inlaw now deceased claimed wasp couldn't sting you if you hold your breath. Claimed it closed up your pores, or something like that. I never tried it myself. So, when they come swarming at you all closed up in the cab, you might try it out. Brothers in law advice , you know.

Well....you could cover the truck with a tarp and point the exhaust from some dirty old gas engine under it and leave it run for about an hour. A lawn mower or something like that should do it. I've also been told you can hang a piece of meat over the top of a big tub of water. The wasps gorge themselves on the meat and can't fly for a little while. When they drop down they drown. Don't know about that one.

If inside the cab a simple bug bomb will do the job. If out side the cab a tarp and that same bug bomb. Or dive it in a shed that is closed up and bug bomb the shed and the truck at the same time

As seemed to be universally the case in my memory, as a kid I just couldn't leave a wasp's nest alone. Few things seemed to excite as much focused energy as trying to put an end to such a threat. Over time we graduated from crude rocks and sticks to shotgun blasts, rags soaked with kerosene and held at a precarious distance with the longest pole we were able to procure and so on. Thus directed, we leaned our creative bent. Our creativity eventually reached its high water mark with the launching of bottle rockets into the heart of the hive, directed with lengths of pipe and a welding glove over the end of it to protect our hands from the gleefully anticipated ignition. To our peril, our escape was complicated by the difficulty of trying to run while laughing our heads off and looking backwards...no simple achievement and one rewarded with mixed results.

As a married and responsible homeowner in a small town, such tactics had to take on a less spectacular yet equally effective venue. A couple of years ago I had the fun of summer painting in a second story eave on a 28 foot ladder. With paint can in one hand and brush in the other, my face tilted awkwardly against the angled under surface of the soffit I was dismayed to discover numerous yellow jackets entering and exiting a small hole above a decorative knee brace and into the wall directly in front of my face. Dropping the brush and hastily descending the ladder I needed a few minutes to calm down. Of course I tried hanging a wasp trap and sprays with limited success but the angle of the hole prevented me from really shooting the spray into it. Time was going by and the paint job schedule was beginning to slip at an alarming rate. What to do? I hit upon the idea of wiring up the nozzle of my wife's vacuum cleaner through the sash window and inches from the hole. My wife wasn't too supportive of the scheme but turning it on for half and hour each day for a week and a half necessitated only a couple of removals and reinstallations--well worth the risk/reward ratio of watching countless yellow jackets approach the entrance only to be pulled off course and vanishing as if into a black hole.

Sometimes the man is richest whose pleasures are the simplest.

Equal parts Commet kitchen Cleaner (or equivalent product) and sugar. Add water to make a loose paste. Leave in an open bucket in their immediate vacinaty.

Last fall the wasps were attacking my honey bee hives and robbing the honey an brood. We locked the bees in the hives at night. The next day we set out the bait. We had to refill a lot, but we ended up with a 5 ga bucket of dead wasps.
This was a serious wasp problem last fall. Many other bee keepers had the same problem last year. I still found wasps flying at Christmas.
And yes they are back again this year, but not quite so many.
Good luck, Grant
Yellow Point Cranberries

I think I'll just run out and try that one... hold my breath while I stir up a yellow jackets nest. LOL

In a situation like that Sevin powder puffed onto the entrance will wipe out the nest. They pick it up on their feet and carry it into the nest.

A little bit off the subject, but a can of wasp
spray is a good defense tool. Someone breaks into your house, a can of wasp spray will shoot about 20 feet and will blind the intruder and
give you time to run or get your gun or whatever you choose to do. Much better than pepper spray.

My grandmother used a rolledup newspaper on a broomstick, set the paper on fire and go for it! The Fire dept. saved the house but the large porch was a total loss. I hope I was adopted!

That's what I'd do. Open the cab, set it off, close the door and walk away until tomorrow.

Mark.

There was a similar case a while ago I think discussed on the radio. But the guy was told to vacuum them up all day then shoot some raid or better yet, carb cleaner into the running vacuum to kill them all. With neither of those products on hand he used a "similar" garage product, ETHER. Vacuum go boom!!

If all else fails I was gonna try the tent and bug bomb, but this sounds like the thing to go with if it works. Buddy has a bunch of cats but I think I will just make a expanded metal cover for a 5 gallon bucket and try this.

Thanks all

jt

I hear all the time about people getting chased by wasps, yellow jackets but maybe I'm just not sweet enough for them as they don't seem to bother me a bit ..... even when I'm killing them.

Just Saturday, wife and I were working in the yard and she mentioned that an upright log/stump that I used as a splitting block had a nest of yellow jackets in the bottom. It was sitting on a patch of cement walk. Sure enough, I went over and they were going in and out underneath it like crazy. Ignoring her advice to wait until dusk, I just zapped the bottom of it with the foam spray from about 3 ft away and watched the show. As more would show up or exit the stump, I'd spray them. She got about 50 ft away (she's allergic to such stings and goes on Benadryl if she does get stung) but the wasps just buzzed around me as I nailed them. Little later, she asked if they were all dead, so I walked over to the stump and kicked it. She thought I was nuts.

Last week, I went to put the battery in my backhoe and when I took the cover off, there was a wasps nest hanging from the dangling cable. I just grabbed it with my glove and threw it on the ground and stomped on it. The wasps flying around seemed confused as I grabbed them out of the air with my gloved hand and smashed them.

Was brush hogging yesterday and must have rolled over a nest as a swarm of "some kind of bee" came out of the grass. I just cranked the throttle and moved on.

Anyone else seem to be immune to getting stung?

(Of course, I've now jinxed myself and will probably get zapped this weekend. LOL)