I hate Yellow Jackets!

[PHIL850]

Finally got the clutch fixed in my JD 850, and was brush-hogging around our
place to get some clean up done. I have a 5' IMO Brush hog that will take a beating
and keep on ticking. I lowered it away on some brush and was beating up the stuff and of course when you do such a thing, it throws up a lot of dust and crud. All of a sudden I notice that the crud it was throwing up was a mass of Yellow Jacketes (ground bees).
Being very allergic to these things, I pulled out of there as fast as I could. Of course being in low range that isn't very fast! I got about 20' away and shut off the PTO, killed the throttel, and abandond ship. How I didn't get stung I'll never know.

Now the wife won't let be mow the field untill we get a good hard Frost!

Oh well!

Phil C.

 

[ninefinger]

Seen a few around here but they have not gotten thick as fleas yet unless I have just been lucky. They will most likely be here later this month.

 

[Cocre]

Several years back I ran over a nest on my 8N, got stung 22 times. I was buzzing like a bee myself. A couple of weeks ago I dug one up with the Deere, only got popped three times. I have hit nests two more times since, but did not get the first sting. I was covered with Deet those times, don't know if that had anything to do with it or not.

 

[dex3361]

I hate yellow jackets as bad as copperheads and with yellow jackets I take the scorched earth approach. I hate yellow jackets did I say that already? Well I really do.

 

[Opti-Mist]

FWIW I heard that parking a walk behind mower over the nest, running of course, will agitate the yellow jackets to come out and the running mower will anihilate them and leave no evidence.

 

[timswi]

I got hit but good once too...I took every burnable liquid I could find, poured it in the hole and lit it. I think the straight 50 racing oil worked best

My former neighbor was allergic to them. He got hit 45 times. He woke up at 3am swollen like the michelin man. The ER doc told him that the obscene amount of Budwiser in his system probably saved his life because the booze acted like an ani-venom. So there's some advice for you

 

[MikesTractor]

Last summer I was mowing one of the fields on the back of my mom's farm. About half way down one side I noticed that I was coming up on a mound of dirt. Since we have fire ants here in the South, I didn't think much about it when the dust flew as I cut the top of the mound off. I went on around the field and as I got near where I cut the top off the mound of dirt, I saw what looked like a small black cloud above the damaged mound. When I got a little closer, I could tell what I did. I had cut the top off of a Bumble Bee mound....

They acted like they were mad...can't imagine why...

Mike

 

[ninefinger]

FWIW I heard that parking a walk behind mower over the nest, running of course, will agitate the yellow jackets to come out and the running mower will anihilate them and leave no evidence.

Trust me, all you do is run the mower out of gas and give the yellow jackets a Hornet attitude.

 

[Tractorbeam]

How would you like to discover this nest in your car?

 

[George2615]

I hate yellow jackets too.

My son and family are coming up from Jersey next week to visit and plan on staying in my camper. On Saturday I started to clean out the camper which is parked in the side yard about 50 feet from the house in between some trees. There was already some junk on the ground (old tonneau cover, TV antenna, bottles and cans etc. so I got in the trailer and started throwing more junk out the door and onto the pile. Then I brought the tractor around and loaded up the bucket with the junk, hopped on the tractor and headed toward the garage to bag it all up. As I got off the tractor I felt a sharp pain in the lower left side of my stomach. At first I thought I over did the bending over and felt another pain in the same area. I looked down and saw a yellow jacket on my shirt and assumed it had stung me. I gave it a good smack and it fell to the ground. That's when I felt another sting by my shirt pocket and saw another yellow jacket. I swatted it to the ground to step on it. When I looked down I saw about 20-30 YJ's on my pants legs trying to sting me. Fortunately they missed. I got some brake cleaner spray and sprayed them off my pants stepping on them as they fell. Had anyone been watching they would have thought I was doing a rain dance or something.

Turns out they had built a ground nest under the tonneau cover and didn't like it when I moved it. I walked back toward the camper only to see a swarm of thousands like a big black cloud. I shot two full cans on wasp and hornet spray (the 20' shot cans) and then tried spraying them with gasoline in a pump up sprayer. After the two cans of spray and gas the black cloud did not appear any smaller. I figured it either wasn't affecting them or as fast as I was killing them more came out to replace them. I decided to call it a day for that job. Went back out after dark to douse the hole but with all the gas and spray residue on the ground they were still swarming at 9PM.

I let things calm down till today and checked the area again. No big swarm but still several flying around. Too many to get close enough to do anything. Guess I'll have to wait a few more days and get a flame thrower or something. I figure the nest must be 3-4 years old and pretty big.

I did get enough time on Sunday to back under the trailer hitch with the tractor and pull it out and over by the garage to finish that cleaning out.

Tractorbeam, What a waste of a good 55 Chevy

 

['Bota Fan]

How would you like to discover this nest in your car?

Okay. That for real?

 

[woodchuckie]

You'll get a lot more bees per gallon if you wait as late as you can and pour a gallon down the hole and don't light it. Just go to bed. I have a 2 inch piece of pvc about three feet long with some screen taped over one end. I quickly jab the other end in the ground at the hole and then I have time to pour the gas in without too much worry about getting stung.

 

[Willl]

I quickly jab the other end in the ground at the hole and then I have time to pour the gas in without too much worry about getting stung.

I can 'almost' picture that, but were going to need video to confirm.

 

[AchingBack]

To eradicate a YJ nest; after the sun goes down, place some liver right near the hive entrance. If you have a skunk nearby, it will smell the liver, and discover the nest at the same time. If you don't have a skunk nearby, the aroma of the liver will soon bring one.

Once the skunk discovers the nest, he will gladly tear it apart to eat the contents. This always works for me.

 

[Treemonkey1000]

My brother was using my tractor at my Mom's tearing out blackberries with the boxblade. He got stung above the eye. So he figured he had hit and underground nest. My Step Dad was watching him work from a short distance away and got stung on top of his bald head My brother takes off out of the blackberries with the tractor and gets stung again. So he bailed off the tractor when he had moved it out a distance. As he got off the tractor he got stung again. It was then that he noticed the YJ's had built a nest in the loader arm in a drain hole... He shot that hole full of carb cleaner. That fixed them little bloaks.

 

[kevinj]

I pulled a log from the fence line before brush hogging last weekend and set off a nest of them too. Fortunatley I was using the forks and had a cab on the tractor

There was a bunch of them on the glass in short order.

 

[TomOfTarsus]

I like the "natural" method proposed by AchingBack, but for expediencie's sake (and not wanting skunks around the house), I use a reasonable amount of gasoline. After dark (when everybody's "home") & don't light it. Stuff a rock in the hole when you're done. I've never had a nest come back after that.

Best,

Tom

Gee, I don't even know if we have any skunks in the neighborhood...

 

[J_J]

One of the best tricks I ever did was to use a electronic bug killer, a rather large one. I plugged it in and put it on the end of a 20 ft PVC pipe, and put it close to the pampas grass where they were nesting, and wiggled the bug killer. They came out of there like they were on a mission, and attacked the bug killer. Bad mistake. All you could hear was snap, crackle and sizzle. Killed every one of them.

They don't like petroleum products either.

Another trick. Sneak up on them with one of those propane weed burners. Wear long sleeves and a hat.

 

[BlacknTan]

I don't mess with them until early light after a very cool night when they're sluggish.. Luckily I'm not allergic, but they've gotten me more often than I would have liked..
They're one of the more aggressive hornets.

 

[Opti-Mist]

One of the best tricks I ever did was to use a electronic bug killer, a rather large one. I plugged it in and put it on the end of a 20 ft PVC pipe, and put it close to the pampas grass where they were nesting, and wiggled the bug killer. They came out of there like they were on a mission, and attacked the bug killer. Bad mistake. All you could hear was snap, crackle and sizzle. Killed every one of them. /QUOTE]

We had some get in above the suspended ceiling in a finished walkout basement just before a 2 week vacation. I did what you did, got the biggest zapper I could find, hung it from a tall stepladder, placed a tub half full of water with a skin of oil on it underneath. Plugged in the zapper and left for the holiday. On return we found lots of bodies in the tub and no live yellow jackets in the house anymore after that. We came out on top that time.