Best Tool for killing these bastards is a can of Carburetor Cleaner. It shoots long distance and INSTANTY renders them immobile. They drop like stones to the ground, to be stomped or burned or whatever else you think they deserve. Any on the wing will not return to the nest.
Spraying them with anything else just pisses them off.
I find that the foaming wasp spray works extremely well, and we get a LOT of wasps out here.
A teenager died near here quite recently of trying to get a fire going that way. (I don’t think any wasps were involved.)
I have wasps all over the place and almost never get stung. I suspect it’s because I don’t attack them first.
How about inside the mouth on the upper gum? I was at a BBQ party years ago, sipping on a beer out of the bottle when I felt a jolt of pain inside my mouth. It was a yellow jacket that must have crawled inside the bottle and then got flushed into my mouth when I took the next swig. I spit it out and stomped on it but spent the rest of the party feeling like I’d been punched in the mouth.
And in the innocent bystander category, way back when I had a full head of hair it was curly and usually fairly long. One day I was riding my bike and felt something fly into and get stuck in the hair above my right ear. Without giving it much thought I reached up and tried to gently brush it away and discovered that it was another yellow jacket with the dangerous end pointing right at the back of my hand.
I don’t think I’ve ever been stung by a wasp, but in a former house I did once have a wasp nest hanging from an eavestrough. The wasps were yellowjackets, a fact that I cleverly discerned by the fact that the wasps going in and out of the residence were all wearing yellow jackets. It was like a wasp fraternity.
I’m basically a nature lover at heart but this was not for me. I attacked the nest with a stream of powerful anti-wasp insecticide and ran like hell into the house!
My biggest concern with wasps in the vicinity was that they’d inevitably get into the house through open doors, and then Bad Things could happen!
I don’t think we attack them.
I’m all for living and let live.
The deck and garage are outdoor rooms to us. Wasp nests don’t fit in the decor scheme(
).
So with children, pets and Me the wasps cannot live under the deck.
I’m not losing any sleep over it.
Son-of-a-wrek is a big goof. He does know how to start a fire safely.
I think he was putting on a show for his old Ma.
Since this is the ‘Dope, I’ll be pedantic. They probably were not Yellowjackets, which typically live underground, but rather common paper wasps.
Thank you for the distinction, and I’m sure you’re right.
However, I’m haunted by the last line of a famous short story by Arthur C Clarke, “The Awakening”. A man puts himself into a state of suspended animation and awakens millions of years later to witness the benefactors who revived him. The last line of the story has apparently been revised through the years, but the version I remember is: “He now understood that the war between man and insect was long since over, and that man was not the victor”.
Meanwhile, the war continues and I refuse to concede defeat. I have no special animosity toward houseflies or ants, but I am at war with any larger insect. And I define “insect” in the same terms as Dave Barry: “any creature with way more legs than necessary”.
I am a very “live-and-let-live” kind of guy, but living in the low desert of Arizona (where stinging insects never go dormant) has taught me that they need to be kept away from areas that my family frequents. We had some very over-grown cat’s claw, and I must have nuked 20 nests. That was after our lawn guys got stung. I got stung under the eye (it’s a fact that they go for the eyes). I’d be perfectly happy to leave them alone, but, no - they had to attack first.
Last summer, I was walking the dog down a paved path, and got stung with absolutely no provocation on the top of my head. I found the nest (yellow jackets, in a stone wall), and nagged the city to do something about them, because they were hazard to the hundreds of adults and kids who passed by that spot every day.
Dispatched her. Only the female hymenopterans (ants, bees, wasps) sting. Yes, ants- fire ants sting. They also bite, but just to hang on while stinging. Pedantic mini-rant of a retired biology teacher over.
Ah, the sting of winged vespids does not compare to the agony from a single cow killer who climbed up the inside of my pants leg, envenomating the top of my knee once and calf twice.
I was really excited to see my first cow killer. So beautiful. Almost made me want to pick it up and touch its fuzzy body.
Almost.
I stand corrected. 
Thanks for fighting my ignorance! I think I did know this somewhere in the deep recesses of my wee brain, but I succumbed to lazily referring to them with the incorrect pronoun.
And I hope I never encounter a cow killer!
Wasps terrorize me from mid-July until the first frost, usually in late October. I have an unintended penchant for sticking my face or feet in places where they have built their nests. May this year be an exception.
I am just the same. They can have the run of the place, and it’s plenty large enough for everyone. Just stay away from my house, the yard immediately around the house and the outbuildings, dammit!
@Beckdawrek, sorry your son, daughter and Ivy all got nailed. Even just one sting hurts like the dickens. Sounds like it was quite a show, at least!
This gardener gets maybe one sting a season. Been lucky going some years stingless. When I get zapped, I always keep an unopened (so that it’s still fresh when needed) box of baking soda in my truck. Pour a lttle soda into a cup, add water, and mix to a paste, which you then plonk onto the sting and then bandaid it to keep most ot the mush in place. Good to get the consistency right - too much water will make it too runny to apply, and not enough will make it clumpy and dry and will not do any absorption of the venom, which is the cool thing about the mush - it literally sucks the venom out, so that an hour or so later, the pain is very mild, next to unnoticable, with almost no swelling at all. 
Well, got stung by a centipede in my bathroom.
Hurt very little. But it’s exceedingly ugly to look at.
I hate them little guys. Trimming one of our bushes, which is in a hilly little spot that’s tough to get to, I upset a nest I didn’t know was there. Four of them got me.
The internet tells me:
> Wasps are highly effective predators, feeding on insects that can damage crops and gardens, such as caterpillars, aphids, flies, and spiders. Social wasps like yellowjackets hunt a wide variety of prey.
You have my sympathy! There’s almost always a nest of them somewhere on the part of my acreage I use a lot. The property has a lot of water, and they like to build their nests near it.
One of my greatest fears is to inadvertently disturb them while I’m mowing, exactly as you suffered while trimming. I’ve come too close for comfort at least once. < shudder > I’m sorry you were attacked.
I got stung by a bald-faced hornet some years ago, reaching into a garden plant to pull a pepper. It must have been resting in there and took offense to my hand. The sting actually left a little slice in my finger, more like a small X-Acto blade than a needle.
While I don’t enjoy wasps around me, they can be pretty cool as a concept. Flying predator insects like little bug-hawks. I was once sitting on a patio when a yellowjacket landed on a piece of steak I had been eating. I was done so I decided to let it do its thing rather than antagonize it by waving it off. I watched as it neatly cut a slice of the meat off with its jaws, rolling it with its front legs like a roll of meat sod. When it had enough, it flew off with its prize. Weird, but pretty neat.
A couple of years ago, my wife crocheted a faux wasp nest out of yard, stuffed it with plastic bags and hung it off the back gutter. She said heard that this would stop wasps from building nests since they would see it and think “This spot is taken” and not want conflict with another close by nest. I thought that sounded daffy but it really seems to have worked and the annual hassle of trying to get to half-started paper wasp nests out from under the eves hasn’t been a problem at all since she hung it. Probably doesn’t help with burrowing wasps though.
You know, I ain’t hanging around comparing species long enough to really know what stung me.
I might find out accidentally. I’m certainly not asking for id.