I hate Yellow Jackets!

aczlan · Sep 29, 2009

Interesting thread, we have (had?) a nest of them in the wall of the house, they went in over the door behind the light. I pulled the light off othe other night and last night I blasted them with my homemade Sevin gun. I will take pics tonight and post them. Basically it uses air (from a air tank) to blast powdered Sevin out of a hose (which I set in the opening of the nest). Does quite well.

Aaron Z

TomOfTarsus · Sep 29, 2009

We have them going into the soffit and facia under the overhang of our split entry. We tried the sprays, etc, to no effect - it isn't reaching the nest. We hung one of those water traps with the lure in it, and got some of them. I tired of the shop vac myself; unless you have some way to keep it in place for hours, you're wasting your time, and I'll bet it uses a heap of electricity!

These kind seem to be less aggressive; I got stung once only because I was messing around with the entrance, trying to tape it over with duct tape.

But it seems like we'll have to get something or someone with a delivery system that actually snakes in and reaches the nest. It's either that or pull the siding off- not something I'm overly anxious to try...

CrownHawg · Sep 29, 2009

Yellow Jackets are bothersome, but Red Wasps are down right vicious! I have been battleing a nest on the corner of my house now for several years. Just when I think I have them subdued, I will see them entering in a crack on the eave. I have even tried to caulk them out (or in) to no avail. These things are relentless on this spot. I have been stung several times, but not too many at once. (I would think more than 3-4 would be enough to incapacitate). I'm at a loss with these things.

woodchuckie · Sep 29, 2009

CrownHawg said:
Yellow Jackets are bothersome, but Red Wasps are down right vicious! I have been battleing a nest on the corner of my house now for several years. Just when I think I have them subdued, I will see them entering in a crack on the eave. I have even tried to caulk them out (or in) to no avail. These things are relentless on this spot. I have been stung several times, but not too many at once. (I would think more than 3-4 would be enough to incapacitate). I'm at a loss with these things.

In your situation I can usually see the nest from inside the attic at night and spray with the 20 foot stuff. I had one on the corner also and had to knock the wood off the eve(at night) to find the nest.

skent · Sep 30, 2009

as far as turning the shop vac off, all I did was pull the hose off while the vac was still on, and plugged the inlet hole with duct tape, THEN turned power off. Let the shop vac sit for a week and they were all dead.

My shop vac pulls around 6 amps, (660 Watts for 3 hours or 2 KWH), not much more then the pool filter, our rate for electricity is around .14 per KWH, so that comes to less than $.30 . (Cheaper than Raid)

gonegreen · Oct 1, 2009

All of these Bee stories have me grinning like a skunk eating Yellow Jackets

. Well here's my experience 6 weeks ago. The wife (whose allergic to bees) was push mowing around the house and got nailed by two of them. After further investigation, I located the nest. It was two inches from the basement (plastic) window well. I had debated the gasoline and match idea but common sense kicked in. I settled for a couple quarts of gas and a stone to shove in the hole. I also used the "sneak up on them" approach - early on a Saturday morning. I am also allergic to bees and was very happy when I didn't have any confrontations. About two hours later I needed something out of the basement and found out something in the process. Gasoline vapors will travel into the french drains and basement drains very quickly & easily! It took two days with all of the basement windows open and two fans running to air it out

. The wife was happy the bees were gone but not so impressed with the "plan".

Ken45101 · Oct 1, 2009

You were very lucky!

Part of the reason gasoline is so dangerous is that the fumes are heavier than air and sink into low spots. Also gasoline vapor is very explosive in wide concentrations (2% to 96% IIRC). If the fumes had reached a pilot light in the basement, your house could have disappeared. The explosive force of a gallon of gasoline (fumes) is equivalent to two sticks of dynamite.

Ken

gonegreen said:
All of these Bee stories have me grinning like a skunk eating Yellow Jackets. Well here's my experience 6 weeks ago. The wife (whose allergic to bees) was push mowing around the house and got nailed by two of them. After further investigation, I located the nest. It was two inches from the basement (plastic) window well. I had debated the gasoline and match idea but common sense kicked in. I settled for a couple quarts of gas and a stone to shove in the hole. I also used the "sneak up on them" approach - early on a Saturday morning. I am also allergic to bees and was very happy when I didn't have any confrontations. About two hours later I needed something out of the basement and found out something in the process. Gasoline vapors will travel into the french drains and basement drains very quickly & easily! It took two days with all of the basement windows open and two fans running to air it out. The wife was happy the bees were gone but not so impressed with the "plan".

Captinjack · Oct 1, 2009

I've found that drain oil works the best in ground holes. About half a gallon milk jug or so and you will never see another bee again in that hole. Always do it at night when they are all home.

I had a 4 ft. high nest between the studs on a garage wall and I was ripping off the siding. WOW! A huge cloud of yellow jackets came out, but no one was stung. We used all the wasp spray that we had and it didn't make a dent. We had to get the job done so I filled a 2 gallon weed sprayer with kerosene and set it on fine mist spray pattern. In a couple of minutes they were all dead and back to work we went. The kero worked as good as or better than the commercial spray.

Once I had only gasoline so I mixed a 50-50 mix with drain oil and that worked great also. Straight gasoline is just toooooooooo dangerous.

Butch Howe · Oct 1, 2009

Yesterday my wife got stung twice with the yellow jacket ground bees. I went out last night about midnite and dug them out. Nest was about a foot in diameter and about a foot deep. These guys won't be stinging anybody anymore!! I smashed the nest with the shovel and poured gasoline and tossed a match.

alvanko · Oct 1, 2009

Like aczlan said. I use sevin dust. I also built a "sevin blaster". PVC pipe on the end of an old sandblaster gun. Put some sevin dust in the end (like a muzzle gun). Take it over to the roof eve where the bees are. Hook my air hoze up and "poof". The bees track it in back to the nest and in a day or two they will be dead.
Same with inground bees. Just put some sevin dust in a can, plop it into the hole in the grond, and a couple days later, no more bees.

Sackett2 · Oct 1, 2009

The radio gardener show had a solution to some yg nests. At night place a qt jar over the hole, day comes the bees fly out and get trapped, the ones in the nest don't know that another hole needs to be dug, soon you have most the nest in the jar baking in the sun. I can see there are some problems with this method if the nest has two holes, but for some of the small nests it could work.

gonegreen · Oct 2, 2009

I've had bees building everywhere this year, mostly hornets. I'm down to one hive on the side of my garage about 12" wide and 16" long. I think I'll wait it out till winter comes and deal with them then.

aczlan · Oct 3, 2009

Construction: I started with a 18" piece of 1.5" PVC. The muzzle end has a coupler with a reducer to drop the end to 1/2", it has a nice flare on the inside to help the dust flow out, I have a thread to barb adapter on there which the hose is installed onto.
The butt end has a 1.5" adapter to go to threaded pipe. Then it has reducers to drop it down to 3/4". There are two 3/4" threaded street elbows to turn it around (this to allow me to hold and control it with one hand) this has a side benefit of giving me a handle to remove the butt assembly with. There is a 3/4"-3/8" reducing bushing in the second elbow which does to a 5" piece of 3/8" black iron, followed by a 3/8"-1/4" reducing coupling. I then installed a 1/4" shutoff and a male QD for the airhose.

Overall Picture (Including Aggie, the supervisor). The end that the air hooks into unscrews to allow filling

The removable end, the reducers and the first elbow are glued together so as to keep them from unscrewing. The air hose hooks on the quick connect and the valve controls airflow. I normally open it 1/4-1/2 way. More and there is a lot of blowback

To fill from a 3# sevin cannister, remove the whole plug/sifter so that you have a hole like this:

This is the wrist portion of a kitchen glove. It fits perfectly over the can

The other end of the glove fits perfectly into the end of the gun. This allows me to fill it (I put 1-2 cups in) without spilling it all over the place. It also keeps me from having to touch the dust.

Steps to use it:

Remove the cap
Fill with Sevin
Cap the "butt" end
Connect the airhose to it (with the valve closed)
Spray the entrance of the nest with bee killer (to knock out any sentries)
Stick the hose down the entrance (or against it)
SLOWLY open the valve while standing UPWIND
Shake the gun to prevent clumps from blocking the hose
Cleanup as directed by the directions on the Sevin cannister

Some notes: Do not put anything that reduces the size of the hose, it will cause clumps to form while you are trying to use it (I found this when I put a piece of 1/4" black iron pipe into the end to act as a tip).

If anyone has any questions or would like to see more pictures, ask away.

Aaron Z

brandoro · Oct 4, 2009

Looks like I have a YJ nest in the closed (gyproc) ceiling above the basement bathroom

. The access point is a poorly sized unsealed opening for the vent fan. I just moved into this house in August, took a while to realize the nest was there. Anyway, it is getting colder out, +3C (about 38F) right now so I am wondering how cold yellow jackets need to be before they aren't much of a threat. I have a walk out basement from the laundry room which the downstairs bathroom opens onto. My thinking is to seal the opening from the laundry room to the rest of the house, open the outside door to let both rooms cool down then pull the bathroom vent fan out and hopefully have access to the nest that way. If I can reach it I will use the shop vac and whatever else is needed to remove the next. If I can't reach it I guess the gyproc saw will work, a hole to fix in the ceiling is better than sharing the house with such unpleasant types. I have a bug jacket with a screened hood and, since it will be cool I will wear thick clothes with openings taped, just in case but, it would be better if the YJ's were all too cold to get nasty.
The forecast for the end of the week is -4C overnight and not much warmer the next day, seems like a good time to give it a try.
Anyone know how cold is cold enough??

nostep · Oct 4, 2009

I had a very busy underground nest, so I did some google searching. Ran across discussions on using plain old liquid dish soap (also mentioned here a few pages back). My wife mixed up a batch of soapy water like you'd do to wash your car and dumped it on the nest. Never saw another flying paper wasp at that hole.

Next time.

After unfurling a brand new patio table umbrella, I noticed we had a few extra visitors. We needed a new umbrella because the previous one smelled like wasp spray and we had to get rid of it. Since I did not have permission to ruin this new one with bee spray, I resorted to trying the soapy water again. I mixed up a small batch in a plastic cup and threw it upwards at the 5 paper wasps. They all fell down on the table and wiggled in the soap bubbles. I watched the show from my lawn chair with a cold beverage. Show lasted about 1 minute. Dead wasps.

Soapy water is easy and safe, unless you can fly

General Lee · Oct 24, 2009

Treemonkey1000 said:
Back in my younger days I just blasted the nest with my ole Winchester 12 gauge if it was in a good enough spot to shoot...

HAha, I did that with a 12ga a couple weeks ago. Blasted a basketball size white faced hornet's nest from a low lying branch. OH WHAT FUN!

Treemonkey1000 · Oct 24, 2009

General Lee it is kind of a hoot seeing them explode isn't it?

7oaks · Aug 14, 2012

I really hate yellow jackets - and misleading labels ....

I came across a yellow jacket nest in the ground while grading some dirt, there were thousands of them all around the tractor. After I got hit once I realized what they were and got out of there. I came back with protection on and three cans of Spectricide spray. The can said "instant knock down" and had a picture of the exact bee on the label, so I felt confident. I had used the same stuff on wasps and it killed them instantly. But it didn't affect these mean little buggars at all. I emptied all three cans and didn't kill any.

I知 going back with, Malathlon and, gasoline. That sting hurt for three days.

I contacted the company that makes Spectricide and was looking for a solution, what I got was a trite statement that the label was approved by the EPA, that was useless to me.

Anyway, the lesson here is Don稚 trust labels.

cobb71 · Aug 15, 2012

I have never seen yjs as bad as they are here this summer. I have killed 5 nests allready. I also had one behind the siding, sprinkled aheavy dose of sevin dust and it worked.

BigBoyinMS · Aug 15, 2012

About a month ago my wife "found" a nest while we were working at our property. I haven't had a chance to go back but I'll be armed correctly when I do. Think I'll try the soapy water before the gasoline/oil mix I had ready.
The odd thing is i have never seen them as small as these. I got close to the area looking for the hole and kept seeing what I thought was tiny pieces of leaves or "tree trash" fluttering to the ground. But they all landed in the same spot. That's when I realized that was the YJ's. They must be a 1/4 of the size of the ones That I'm used to seeing.
The only time in my adult life that I've been stung by a YJ was a few years ago while mowing near a fence. I had been hearing some shooting on the property next door and my first thought was that I had been shot on the tip of my finger. When I didn't see blood I realized it was a YJ.