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Author Topic: Project: Exterminate Yellow Jackets  (Read 2481 times)

Offline ChrisSmolinski

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Project: Exterminate Yellow Jackets
« on: March 25, 2017, 1949 UTC »
The warm weather means NOW is the time to start trapping and killing yellow jacket queens. Each queen you kill now means one fewer nest, which means thousands of fewer yellow jackets.

http://www.radiohobbyist.org/blog/?p=2099
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Re: Project: Exterminate Yellow Jackets
« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2017, 2337 UTC »
                                                 

                                                                                 Sign Me Up!

Offline Pigmeat

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Re: Project: Exterminate Yellow Jackets
« Reply #2 on: March 26, 2017, 0036 UTC »
You throw the queens in 55 gallon barrel of sand and put the lid on with a couple of holes near the top of the barrel. When your dim-witted cousin stops by on the 4th of July you say, "Hey Al, get me some sand out of that barrel to help snuff these coals out." While he heads off to do it, everyone runs in the house and watches the "Dance of The Yellow Jackets" as they chase him around the yard. Lock the doors and close the windows, you don't want him bringing the hive in the house. It's a nice prequel to the fireworks later.

(Have an Epi-pen ready in case he's allergic. Nothing ruins the 4th like having to take a guy with a weak immune system to the ER and missing out on the fireworks.)

The real fun of this trick is it will work for years. After a year they've normally forgot what's in that barrel. If you switch it from the 4th to say Labor Day and Memorial Day on a random basis, and swear you took care of those yellow jackets, this one will work for decades. You can switch to sand hornets if you have qualms about lying to the guy about the yellow jackets. Keep the barrel at the far end of the property. You don't want innocent possums and raccoons getting hurt. Just relatives and annoying trespassing kids. It works better than a hose for both.

Offline myteaquinn

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Re: Project: Exterminate Yellow Jackets
« Reply #3 on: March 26, 2017, 0131 UTC »
Wish you had posted that before last summer. My wife wanted me to take care of the hornet nest in the corner of the garage door. So I got my shop-vac and told her to watch this.
She did stay in the house behind the screen door and no she wouldn't open it for me. It should have dawned on me when I heard her lock the door.
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Offline Pigmeat

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Re: Project: Exterminate Yellow Jackets
« Reply #4 on: March 26, 2017, 0214 UTC »
Yep. We had some set up shop on the far end of the back porch in a small nest three summers ago. My wife kept asking me when I was going to take care of that hornet's nest. I told her "November".

BTW, I was only kidding about the sand hornets. One of my first clear memories is being nailed by one of those things about the age of five after priming the pump at an old farm we owned. I tried to run but it nailed me on my right side just above the hip. I couldn't sleep on that side for two weeks as that sting ran through a kaleidoscope of colors before it healed. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.


Offline Skipmuck

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Re: Project: Exterminate Yellow Jackets
« Reply #5 on: March 26, 2017, 2059 UTC »
I've had a number of run-ins with these evil creatures, starting when I was 6 years old and stuck a broom handle down a ground nest....one of them stung me on the nose and my eyes swelled up badly. The next time was when my friends and I were playing Zorro with sticks knocking down a bunch of ferns down in the swampy area of Poor Brook. We disturbed a ground nest and they were flying around in a cloud all around us. It felt like darts hitting me...got stung 9 or 10 times and the damned things followed us as we ran away! There have been a number of other incidents over the years too. I think I'm going to try a couple of these traps out in the backyard this year....thanks for the link!
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Offline clobdell

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Re: Project: Exterminate Yellow Jackets
« Reply #6 on: March 27, 2017, 0128 UTC »
I think it was about 20 years ago when I received a frantic phone call from my wife on  how one of our son's bedrooms was filled with yellow jackets!
It seems the pests were expanding their nest in the attic above the bedroom ceiling, and they were eating away the plaster wallboard to make more room, which is quite common.
My wife heard the sound and thought they were "ants", so she went around tapping the ceiling with the end of a broom handle until she broke through into the nest.
Fortunately no one was stung and "the bee guy" came to the rescue with his vacuum. I hate those pests.
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Offline Pigmeat

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Re: Project: Exterminate Yellow Jackets
« Reply #7 on: March 27, 2017, 1155 UTC »
Any right thinking human who picked up a can of pop to take a drink in the summer months and has been nailed by one, hates them, Chris.

I went up to do battle in the attic with wasps a few years back in similar circumstances. I had the jumbo can of Raid Hornet and Wasp gunk, canvas gloves, safety goggles, coveralls, more clothes under those, a hoody pulled tight, and a cheap painters double air filter. Let me tell you, I was wishing I hadn't gave away Grandpa's bee-keeping outfit when the heat from the attic hit me.

I didn't need the clothes, but a better air filter would have been have been nice. They were by one of the side vents, about 8 feet away from the attic entrance. I gave them several blasts and that was that. I must have got the queen, as when I checked a couple of days later there were a lot of dead wasps and the rest were gone. It was so hot in the attic I think they were more concerned about keeping the queen cool than worrying about a giant beetle looking thing that had popped it's head up through the floor? I was woozy for most of the rest of the day from those Raid fumes. Good ol' Raid, extra bug killing power and a geeky buzz in every can.

I rented a house once where the enclosed space over the porch got full of hornets one summer. The buzzing was so loud some nights it was hard to sleep. I had a good landlord. I called him about a week into it. He called the exterminator, and the job was done the next day. I think bug killers name was Shackleford?

It's odd the way various insect stings effect different people. Wasp and yellow jacket stings hurt, but they don't cause me to have much of reaction, just a red bump that hurts. I step on a bumblebee and my foot will swell to the size of a hippo's. Sand hornets are in a league of their own. We've got scorpions, but they're tiny. They look like a slightly oversized, off colored silverfish and are said to pack a punch between a sweat bee and your average horsefly, but the sting swells a bit. They live mostly in abandoned sheds, old houses, and unfinished dry basements.

Brown recluse spiders cause a lot of damage here due to the nature of their venom. It eats away at the flesh and muscle around the wound. Nasty little things, and they're everywhere. They can occasionally kill depending on the age and health of the victim. You never know they're there until you disturb one and then it's too late.

Just be glad the Eurasian hornet has never made the trans-oceanic trip and gone native. Those things can kill children, the ill, and the elderly with a single sting.

Offline moof

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Re: Project: Exterminate Yellow Jackets
« Reply #8 on: April 08, 2017, 2143 UTC »
Get ye a quart of malathion. Mix a triple strength gallon or two and pour it on the nest at night.
Problem solved.  I have even poured the concentrate down a garden hose to spray  hornet nests in trees the canned stuff couldn't quite reach.

Offline Josh

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Re: Project: Exterminate Yellow Jackets
« Reply #9 on: April 09, 2017, 1559 UTC »
A guy at a place I worked at ran into a nest in the yard and put some gas in a baby food jar, tossed the gas into the air near the nest and they dropped out of the air dead, just like that.
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