I think I'm going to change my handle to "wild bee keeper"
I haven't posted the big hornet nest on the house peak for a while but when I do you will be amazed how it has grown.
Yesterday we started getting yellow jackets in the house. We don't usually bother bees, snakes and other wild life if they don't bother us. We figure their ancestors were here before us and their future generations will be here long after we are gone.
We have an outside chimney and noticed mud tubes on the side next to the house wall and yellow jackets coming in and out of the area of the pointed mortar joints. So off to the basement and that corner. Sure enough a space between a floor joist and a furnace pipe that had no insulation. My wife went into the walk in closet on the main floor where the furnace pipes go up to the second floor and she said it sounded like a buzz saw behind the plasterboard.
What to do? What to do? :confused3: Get on the net, yep.
FG19, don't read any further as we know you said you were an organic gardner
Every spring we spray our orchard trees before budding and right after with some crazy named spray to keep the fruit from being spotted and eaten by bugs. Basically it is Malathion and some other stuff I can't spell.
So mix up a little stronger than normal percent gallon in the hand pump sprayer and go to battle.
Sure made them mad

I watched her spraying out of the window in case they really got to her. I figured if they did, I might open the window and yell at them

or call Lou for advice.
It made them drunk and they did not try to attack the sprayer.
A couple hours later another dose to get any returning workers and spray it all along the joint of the siding to the bricks. A short time later the noise in the wall stopped. Whew! about wore me out.:laughing:
Time for the caulk gun.