Yellowjackets
 

I inadvertently agitated a ground nest yesterday evening and was starting to get swarmed. They only got me a few times before I got away. This morning I got my revenge. I got my trusty foaming spray and killed the whole nest. There's something I really love about doing that.

I have had problems with the ground yellow jackets since moving to NC. I was getting stung every spring/summer. This spring i tried something more proactive. So far so good this year. This link is just to show how jug is set up.

https://youtube.com/shorts/wi-KiU8eg...BvAITKGfyPSsWJ

I cut my jug like the one in the video add 2 cups of unfiltered apple juice, 1 table spoon pure boric acid, 1 piece of bacon 4 or 5 cubes of cut up cantalope and add a couple twigs so the queen can climb in and out of the jug. I have to "reload" the jug every couple weeks.

I normally use these Rescue traps. They work really well and are easy to set up. This year we've had no activity at all until now so I didn't have any traps out.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KH8X2ZA...n_title_1&th=1

Yellow jackets are dangerous.

Walk over yard before cutting. You can see them going back to nest, most of the time.

Reminds me of a nest we killed a while back. It was early fall, but still warm, leaves had already started to fall. Me and a friend used the old carburetor cleaner spray, I'm allergic so he took primary and sprayed almost a whole can in there. Second can, we light it up with a lighter, which initially appeared to have neutralized the enemy. A few seconds later, flaming wasps start flying out, making it a few feet before crashing and literally burning. Next thing we know, there's fires starting in the dry leaves, everywhere. Took an hour to get the fires under control. In retrospect, just waiting till nightfall and soaking the nest with wasp spray would have been a wiser tactical solution.

I found out the hard way that wasp/hornet spray won't touch them.

The sprays have always worked really well for me. Right now I'm using Ortho Home Defense foaming spray. I like the foam especially for ground nests because it fills and covers the opening so when they try to get out they're killed.

I did put out a trap yesterday too to capture any that were not in the nest when I sprayed. It's got about 600 in it as of this morning and there weren't any flying around it. The nest has no activity at all.

I use the good kind of brakekleen

That's my normal procedure is to do it after nightfall or very early in the morning before they're active. This time I slept in a bit too late for that but I did it anyway because this nest was right next to our vegetable garden so it was high priority. What's weird about it is that we never noticed it even though it was in a high use area. Anyway, they're dead now.

According to Grok AI, BASF Alpine WSG is the stuff to use.

https://www.amazon.com/BASF-59020863...54&sr=8-1&th=1

Most years I get tagged by those bas---ds. Been lucky this year (but it is still early). 3 years ago my wife got into a nest when she was doing some yard work. Got stung several times but tore up her knee getting away from them.......had to have surgery. About 5 years ago I was running a bobcat doing some clearing on my property and dug into a nest under an old stump. They were highly perturbed and I couldn't get out of the Bobcat quick enough to avoid getting stung about 10 times. Hate those sobs!

Get 2-3 nests a yr.
My favorite thing start 40 yr old push mower over den.
Takes 3-4 tries.
Give basterds a chance before hurricane!

Am I mean vs deaf by poisoning children and pets?

DITTO !

Best, safest, & easiest way to kill the nest is the use of a clear plastic cover that you get with a sandwich tray at a supermarket. During the day, take note of the hole where they come & go in the ground. Throw down something to mark it, then come back when it’s dark and they are all in the nest. Place the plastic cover over the hole area, making sure it seals to the ground. In the morning when it’s light out, they will leave the nest, get trapped under the plastic cover, and eventually all die.

As a teenager, my dad and I used to rob yellow jacket nest. We would find the entrance and stuff a lit flare in there. The flare would stun the bees. We would dig into the nest and remove a section of the web. The unborn bee larva make great fish bait for bream, redbreast and other sunfish.

This brings up another problem area
parts cars stored outside.
get a heavy duty tarp to cover entire car,
making sure its completely covered and in the sun
Anything over 125* will kill them.

My goal with ground nesting yellow jackets is prevention not interested in getting stung at all.
As I previous posted in post #2 that's the recipe i use. So far so good this year. If they do show up i'll get some of the bags suggested by jhein.

I've lived on this property for 18 years. I usually get 2-3 nests that I find every year. Until now, I've never been swarmed. I've never found them to be aggressive unless you really disturb their nest. I can stand quietly right next to a nest and they fly in an out an ignore me completely. The main problem we have is that we like to eat outdoors in the summer and they are really attracted to the smell of food so that's pretty annoying. But they don't want to sting us, they just want the food.

The Rescue traps I posted are good for reducing the number you have foraging around. The attractant they use works really well and I can trap literally thousands of them. But they won't kill a nest. They claim that if you put them up early in the season you can kill the queen but that's never worked for me, but maybe I didn't get them out early enough.

A lot of people say that the can sprays don't work but I've had pretty good results with them. But since I did my AI search, I'm going to try the BASF stuff that I also posted. That appears to be what the professionals use.

Buy a small cheap can of tuna and one packet of the flea treatment for cats and dogs( the kind that you put two drops on the animals back). Mix JUST two drops of the flea drops in the tuna can and either leave the whole can out in yellow jacket areas or cut off plastic water bottles and distribute the mixture to the bottoms of the plastic bottles. Set in high yellowjacket areas or around your outdoor recreation areas.
Cats will not like it because it smells like the flea drops and the yellowjackets will carry the tuna back to the nests and poison all the larva and queen.
Do not mix too many flea drops in the tuna or the yellojackets will die before they bring back to the nests.

That's a great idea. That way you can kill nests that you haven't even identified. Excellent. Thanks! Although it will deprive me of the joy of directly killing them.

if you spray, make sure you do it at night time. That way all the bees will be in the hive and at rest.