Sitrep, month 1: Holding ground against these painful buggers, eliminating 1 to 3 per week. Sealing every hole in hopes of stemming the horde.

Sitrep, last week: Losing ground as 3 or 4 are found every day. Donned protective armor and checked every seals and hunted every corner for the blasted nest.

Sitrep. 5 minutes ago. Driven insane with my constant motion tracker imitation as I hunt for the buggers with a vacuum and a can of raid. As the protective armor gets hot, I stand under the cooler vent. Noticed a few more blasted buggers flying around. With the motion tracker beeping faster, I look slowly up toward the vent...oh Jesus.

Sounds like you are in your own world of Aliens. All the best to you!

Are they better than Blue Jackets on ice?

No pics?

what has happened? They didn't carry you away did they? If the nest is visible it is much easier to dust with sevin powder.

Diatomaceous earth (food grade) and borax work well, too.

I have a quart container of Diazinon, it's over 10 years old. I don't think you can buy it anymore.
I mix it as necessary, usually 1 oz per gallon of water, then spray, or dump into the yellow jacket hole in the ground "AT NIGHT".
If you spray them with Diazinon in mid air, they fall like a lead weight.
Pouring it into their nest kills them all. Cover the hole with a glass jar. Leave it for a week.
They'll all be dead. Very dangerous wasps to have near your home.

BTW...'yellow jackets', are very small wasp, and almost always make their nests, 'in the ground'.
Probably the worst 'wasps' in the U.S.
Bad stings and very, very aggressive.

Don't know about other countries.

Good luck.

Spoiler to keep the fragile psyches of certain members here.


There were four nests in there of similar sizes with a fifth started.

Those look like regular wasps, yellowjackets are smaller and normally build their nests in or near the ground. I had some fly up my pant leg after unknowingly stepping on a nest when I was a kid, and you can probably guess where they stung me. I get nests like the ones in your pic around my place a lot, and except for the one they built under the eave right above my door I leave them alone. Wasps are important predators of pest insects (Braconidae kill tomato hornworms, for example), and if those wasps each kill just 3 or 4 mosquitos a day they've earned the right to squat as far as I'm concerned.

Being allergic to bee stings I always keep a couple cans of wasp spray handy ..They tend to like unoccupied bird houses and holes in trees

That is a major selling point for me, right there.
Not to belittle the wasp problem in any way, but mosquitoes feckin LOVE me.

We have both the paper ones that love eaves and the mud dauber ones that put big dark mounds on the side of your house in our neighborhood. I hate bugs that sting. Biting sucks, but I can accept ant bites and mosquito bites. Take those over a sting any day.



The Jedi Master

Nuke the site from orbit. Only way to be sure...

These are the ones to watch out for, don't even mess around with one if you find it. I'd stay a good 50m from it, because they are aggressive and MEAN.



And the residents, bald-faced hornets.

This cheesy classic was on the other night:



Killer bees, now Japanese Super Hornets. Ugh! I spent one summer working for my brother law's aluminum siding company. Almost every damn day it was wasps or hornets. Can't stand them !!!!

Just came in from spraying 8 wasp nests on resident decks. Hate these damn things.
They build nests in the exhaust tubes of the furnaces. So then, I wind up dealing
with them all winter to. The back pressure they create causes the furnace to not
fire up. just blow cold air when the fan kicks on. So I have to climb out in the
snow with a long wire with hook bent into it and dig them out. Would you believe
I have dug out a live nest when it was only -3F outside. They did not give me any
problems since they froze right away. Just not looking forward to it again.

Lots of good info here.

Yeah, right again Phil, those bald face hornets are just as aggressive as the yellow jackets.
But easier to spot from a distance.
The yellow jackets I usually find when I'm cutting the lawn, or just walk near one.
Hard to spot, and just as mean as the bald face hornets.
I've kill 'one' nest of the bald face hornets, once in 20 years up here.
Got them at night, with the spray...then ran like hell.
Lucky they were just low enough in the tree to reach while standing on a 6' ladder,
which I left at the scene, till the next day.
It was a sight to see, from a distance with a small flashlight.
Hundreds, maybe thousands, leaving at once in a mass ball, I turned out the light real quick.

But I've nuked a dozen yellow jacket holes at night.
I throw a rock or cup, to mark the spot during the day.
Easier to find at night, late at night.

And it's true, they are good for the forest, but just not near your home, or in your yard.
I have 'rules'.
They stay out of my fenced 2 acres, and can have the other 30+ acres if they wish, cause they do kill mosquito's and black flies, which are the bane of the forest in early summer.

So in reality, they're good and bad, good away from the home, bad near it.

And I 'do' let any other wasps or hornets nest in my yard, I don't have problems with them, they don't bother us.
I think you actually have to 'hit' the big bumble bees, or attack their nest, for them to sting you.
Honey bees are becoming rare, and just to valuable to screw around with. I smile when I see one.
Like every species, you always have the one or two dangerous ones, you simply can't tolerate.....sad

I feel like I link this in a bee thread here every other month:



Needless to say, stingy bees suck. Bumble bees are fine but I hate violent hornets and wasps and such, they get sprayed ASAP upon discovery. Doesn't help that the dog loves to catch and eat them, ticking the hive off.

You guys up north can have those bald faced hornets.

I'll stick with my gators and snakes thanks....and mosquitos, black widows, brown recluses, more snakes...freakin Zika mosquitos, nile virus mosquitos 112 F heat index yesterday

WTH am I doing here??

Heheh, git yerself to the Kingdom of Europp!