My one really successful yellow jacket killing project involved pouring about a pint of gasoline into the entrance hole and setting it on fire. Made me very happy after my childhood experiences of stepping into a nest and getting 75+ stings up one leg.
The instructions say to apply it into the “nest hole” (singular) and the wasps will suffocate. I assume that if you have multiple holes you would have to apply it to each hole simultaneously to make sure they don’t escape out the other hole(s)?
thank you for this link, most informative.
My rancher friend says she has never had a failure with diesel fuel.
Pretty sure it will make my house smell like a truck stop though.
Here’s something you might try, since fire’s out of the question:
A big funnel for each entrance.
Mix up water with dish soap and cooking oil, a cup of oil, a cup of soap, gallon of water. Mix up 4 gallons or so.
Pour it all down the funnels.
The liquid should coat the wasps and their nest and suffocate them and/or trap them with viscosity.
Do it at night. Check in the morning.
The stuff is super fast acting, the don’t call it freeze for nothing. She is going to have to hit both holes but one after the other should do it, the commercial stuff travels farther and will knock them out of the sky easily. Both types are quick kill quick breakdown although I am not familiar with the current chemical profile, the stuff works like gang busters, but you still have to be careful
Capt Kirk
My family remedy is gasoline. Creep out after dark when they are less active and pour about a quart of gasoline in each hole. Since the fumes are heavier than air, they will flow to the lowest part of the nest. Wait until a full 30 minutes have passed. At that point the jackets all will be dead and you can dig up the nest for posterity, or ignite the fumes in a pointless yet entertaining act of spite.
I would buy those wasp traps, they are a plastic bag thing you fill with water, and it gives off a stink wasps seem to like. Place it somewhere far away from people/animal traffic. I did this at the last place I rented, and that bag was crammed with HUNDREDS of corpses!
This. A thousand times over, this. If you read my thread from last fall, you know how well it worked for me. Only thing I would add is to put some sort of bowl over the opening to keep any stragglers trapped.
I think wasp traps are for areas which draw wasps, like picnic grounds, not for dealing with nests. We aren’t talking hundreds here, more like thousands.
Really liking the gasoline idea. Partly because we don’t have to buy another bomb, or a shotgun, or a baseball bat. We GOT gasoline, and lots of variants thereof.
I’d call an exterminator or obtain the proper chemicals from a hardware store. I’d want to be sure every last one of them is dead, and no way they’ll try to re-establish that nest. Don’t know if they actually would, but I’d want to be sure they don’t. Those big ball things I burn up with some flaming rags on the end of an extension pole. Make sure it starts burning, try to drape the rags over the nest. I’ve never been stung, they seem to be in too much of a panic over the burning nest to identify me as the culprit. I hate wasps.
If I had a nickel …
When I was a kid, yellow jackets were these yellow and black striped wasps that built nests on things (trees, mailboxes)* rather than under the ground waiting to be stepped on.
That was in north Texas. Where are these ground-crawling monsters located? I wish to make sure never to live there.
*I was stung by yellow jackets from a nest that had been built on the underside of my family’s mailbox. I do not understand to this day how it was possible for there to be a wasp nest there. How did we check our mail? How did it get delivered? But there it was nevertheless.
Did you guys know that wasps and other social insects are better than other insects at distinguishing particular human faces? And recognizing them again days later?
I’m afraid the ground-nesting colonial wasps often called yellow jackets or ground bees (though they are not bees) are pretty much everywhere, including Texas. Link to a summary about them.
We have other kinds of paper wasps too, there was a big nest just above the door of the garden shed a few years ago. But they never bothered anyone. Around here it is just the yellow jackets which are wantonly aggressive.
Borrow a crazy nastyass honey badgerfrom one of your neighbours.
Well, skunks eat wasps. We have skunks. But then, the dogs and the skunks mix very poorly. Difficult.
I checked, and my neighbors don’t want to share their honey badgers. Selfish, I call it.
This is a really foolish idea unless you like being stung multiple times, and then possibly being arrested.
Same with anything that involves gasoline.
The plus side is that maybe we’ll read about you in the Darwin Awards. Or in some EPA newsletter .
**
Capt Kirk** gives good advice, as does tomndebb (if it’s only a small nest with one hole), and wasp traps will work, very safely as Incubus sez.
So, try the Captain’s idea first, then use the other two as follow ups. When you use the stuff Capt Kirk suggests, do wear decent protective clothing- boots with heavy trousers into them, gloves, goggles, a hat, long sleeved shirt.
It’s more than possible to be accurate hitting a stationary target from outside of a wasp’s range and then get into a car/house/whatever. And generally, discharging a firearm is only illegal within city limits.