After fruitlessly bombing with OTC cans of wasp spray three times, we ordered insecticide powder from an online company called Pestmall.com. It is made by Bayer and the active ingredient is “deltamethrin”. We also got a hand blower/applicator.
But we didn’t use it, because while we were waiting for these objects to arrive we poured about a quart of kerosene down each of the three holes of the nest, at dusk. And that did it. We didn’t light anything. It took about ten days before the last few groggy poisoned wasps died.
That was my rancher friend’s advice, and like virtually all her advice, it might not have been pretty, ecologically benign, or humane, but damn, it got 'er done.
placing some dry ice near the hole and cover the dry ice and hole with a bucket will let carbon dioxide gas fill the nest and suffocate them. do this in evening when all have gone in.
pouring a volatile liquid down might also; though there is the flammability hazard, need to use more than would actually be needed to produce enough vapor, not good for the soil.
Try pouring a big, ole pot of boiling water on the nest. It’s my favorite method of killing fire ants. It does have the unfortunate side effect of killing everything around the nest, too.
For extra effect, you should laugh manically and yell “Die!” while puring.
Frankly, I am sure this would not have worked on this nest, which traveled horizontally underground some five feet. By the time the water reached the center it would have been harmless.
I’m curious why carbon dioxide wasn’t used. A pan of vinegar with a box of baking soda dumped in with a vapor barrier over the top should have cut off all the oxygen to the nest.
Not if the nest has multiple openings. Remember that we tried conventional wasp bombs that have always worked for us before, multiple times. This nest was uniquely intractable. We kill five or six in-ground yellow jacket nests every year, and have for the past twenty years. This was the first one that a simple wasp bomb could not handle, even when we emptied bombs into every opening we could find, and stopped up the holes.
All my experience of living so far has taught me that environmentally-benign solutions to challenges now universally solved with evil chemicals and evil machines invariably are less effective, more work, or both. That doesn’t mean I don’t often choose them, in fact I am positive I choose them far more often than the majority of other people, but I have no illusions.
Just keep an eye out, and when you see them digging another hole, put a pickle jar on THAT new hole TOO. Eventually they just starve and/or die of thirst.
However, I’d have to say that covering the entrances with fine mesh, weighting down the mesh, and then simply drowning them with the garden hose is probably the fastest AND safest AND most enviro-friendly.
The OP seems to have a special hate for these things, though, and I think poisoning them just seemed to express that hate more thoroughly.
I wouldn’t say it’s hate, I would describe it as fear. I respect the other potentially dangerous animals we share our mountains with – black widow spiders, scorpions, cougars, wild boar. I’m not afraid of them, and would never seek to harm them unless I was forced to. I am not afraid of the other species of paper wasps that live around here. But I am afraid of yellow jackets. They once nearly killed my dog, they have made various trails around my house impassable for months at a time, they have chased me for a quarter mile, stinging me all the while. They make me very, very jumpy.
I didn’t take any pleasure in vengeance or anything of the sort. I was just relieved that we finally got rid of them.
