Boil a pot of water at night. Take pot out to nest and turn upside down. Leave overnight.
In the morning, the nest will be gone.
Rubbish!
Oh, yeah. That’s been done already. 
Those red paper wasps with the yellow legs are just as aggressive and prone to picking a fight as yellowjackets. In My Arrogant Experience.
ETA: I did the gasoline trick once myself, and threw a match about 10 minutes later. The exploding gasoline fumes were on par with a quarterstick, and left a hole in the ground about a foot deep and across.
Bad boy. I hear Angela Merkel is going to send you a very severe note.
I used to boil fire ant nests in this way. They kept coming back though (must have been an irresistible location).
Good for her. Next time I come across some homicidal vermin, I’ll give her a call.
I went out this morning as soon as there was enough light to see well, and first of all the entire area smelled like gas. I was hoping to see at least a couple of bodies under the carafe so I could finally get a firm ID, but nope. Nothing. I pulled the carafe off the hole, and with a can of raid in one hand and a nice sharp stick in the other, prodded the hole a bit. Nothing. I stomped on the ground, seeing if I could hear that satanic purring noise I heard coming from the nest last night. Nothing. No sign of life at all.
I’m sorely tempted to dig up the nest and see what the hell got me. I have the curiosity of a cat when it comes to shit like this.
I had a yellow jacket nest in the ground in the grass. Several years ago I had cut down a tree in the same area and suppose the stump had rotten under ground creating a hole. Found it while mowing and 5 stung me. After dark I simply sprayed the hole with Spectracide Wasp & Hornet Killer and that was the end of them. Only problem using wasp spray… it killed the grass in that area. But it came back next year.
I used the above spray on another ground yellow jacket nest next door in the daytime. It shoots the spray about 25 ft and kills them instantly.
Future tip: Don’t use gasoline; use diesel. Less explode-y if it gets set off. Also, if you do decide you want the joy of touching it off, let it set for about 30 minutes, first, to make sure it gets deep into the nest and does its job. The sight of the flames shooting out of the opening are wondrous, though.
The above description of yellow jackets was right and they are very aggressive. I’ve had them chase me indoors and continue the hunt. Just as bad are red wasps (huge and vicious). Yellow jackets and red wasps never get a pass from me; they’re just too aggressive. Black wasps, cicada killers, hornets, and tiger wasps, I take a live-and-let live approach to because they generally need some provocation before they’ll sting (plus, hornets are good about taking out deer flies and horse flies, so that’s a plus). Bumble bees, carpenter bees, dirt daubers, and honey bees are on the never-kill list because the amount of agitation required to cause them to sting is phenomenal.
Hopefully you’ve taken out the nest.
I had a LARGE nest in my yard, which I treated with gas last fall. No more yellow jackets. But then in the spring they came back. I treated again but I was still seeing them in the area. I noticed that they had a second entrance 2-3 feet away. Treated that entrance (about a quart of gasoline) and that did the trick.
They don’t just eat spiders. They eat Black Widows. Build mud daubers a damned shrine!
We do not want to hear where you put the corks …
You say that like it’s a good thing.
When I was a kid I once plugged a yellowjacket’s hole with fresh cow dung. [Imagine a satanic smile]. The morning after the nasty bugs were happily flying in and out. They had dug a hole through that muck.
Pictures!
If I knew how to post to YouTube, I would make a video.
If you know how to email a video, I can get it on YouTube. Failing that, still pictures would be great too!
Most people want to go the other direction. Just flavour some fertilizer with a little diesel. Shock and Awe the fuck out the little bastards. History teaches us that all of the other pest will leave us alone if we explode a few of them.
You get the bill whether you have a “political health system” or not: through taxes or your own personal payment when you see the doctor, respectively. TANSTAAFL.
Stale beer with some honey in it works great for my brother.
I was successful in getting the things to disappear by planting stuff that bumblebees like. For some reason, the presence of bumblebees seemd to drive the ground wasps away. I planted cosmos and spider-flower. Spirea attracts bumblebees too.
Alright folks. Here’s the nest.
I’m not sure how the nest was constructed. I tried to take the dirt off gently; I wanted to see the nest as complete as possible. Fail. So the pics are pretty crappy. Also note a dead representative of my enemies. Quite clearly a yellowjacket, about 1/2 inch long. I was going to post pics of my wounds, but… naa. You guys don’t need to lose your dinner.
Interestingly, the nest was only a few inches underground. I figured it would be feet.
[moderating]
We are in GQ, and we’re discussing yellowjackets. Please keep all discussion of health care systems and politics out of this thread.
Thank you. No warnings issued.
[/moderating]
Actually, there’s a crowd out here that really like oogy medical stuff and pictures of it. Not that you should feel obligated towards them, but if you posted pictures of your war wounds trust me, there would be folks out here asking for more.
True that. I posted mine on my blog and no one commented that they lost their lunch!