Help! Yellowjacket nests on the coop!

[birdicus7]

If it is indeed a paper type wasp nest, I've found that the cleanest method is to fill a coffee can about 1/3to 1/2 way with diesel fuel. Take a paint stick with you and as you slip the can over the nest use the paint stick to scrape it off and into the diesel fuel. Wasps will be dead and nest is gone. Dusk is best-use no flashlight...but be quick!

 

[2pinkmom]

Wow! Thanks for the advice, everyone. They are definitely yellowjackets. My pest company guy tells me that they more commonly nest underground, but it isn't too unusual around here for them to nest on buildings. Did I mention that we also found a nest in on of the vents leading to the furnace? Blech. It is D-day for these guys this evening. I'll spray, WD-40, and sweep up!

 

[Imp]

knock them down and prevent them from flying at you for a little while so that you can use the more earth friendly, mechanical method; you know, step on them and squish the little imps.

I am not enjoying this thread.

2pinkmom,
I get both the ground and building yellow jackets. They might be different species but look the same. I find about 2-3 dozen nests on the house every year. For some reason never on the shed or coop. I just keep an eye out for them in the summer, and catch them when they are small. Smaller than a 50 cent piece. For some reason the yellow jackets seem almost calm. I can usually just grab the nest and throw on the ground. Any surviving YJs will hang around and try to rebuild as another poster said. Have never been stung.
The underground ones, they are nasty. They really have something against fence building, or just about everything. And yes they swarmed me a couple times. I tried to ignore them and work faster, but hard to ignore them when they are crawling under your clothes. I found that if you put something like a blanket over the entrance it confuses them and they left me alone. I saw a PBS documentary about bees, wasps etc. Apparently they are very visually oriented. They find their way by landmarks, and if they move or change they easily get confused.

Good luck,
Imp​

 

[noodleroo]

OOPS! Sorry Imp, no offense; I was just trying to come up with a 'family friendly' word....

 

[Imp]

Quote:
Of course, no offense was taken. Found it funny. Feel free to continue bashing impkind. I'll keep laughing.

img]http://bestsmileys.com/lol/7.gif[/img]

 

[GammaPoppyLilyFlutter]

There's some beekeeper clothes that protect from stings, they might help with your case as well. Perhaps collect the nests and put them in another bag while your chickens are in the yard, then spraying them with inexpensive poison somewhere else. Keep yellow jacket traps around, too, just in case there will still be some around

 

[ellend]

Yellow jackets USUALLY don't fly at night, but they CAN. And their accuracy is still deadly in the dark. (We drove our last tent stake into an underground nest once, in the dark & rain. Hubby (the staker) got a few stings, and I (who was 20 feet away at the time, still in the dark) got two before we made it to the safety of the car.

They nest in ground and in cavities.

Don't burn except in ground holes away from buildings; a friend's neighbor burned his in a garage post. In the middle of the night my friends' dog woke them--the neighbors' (apparently smoldering) garage burnt to the ground. I'm sure their insurance agent found the story interesting...wouldn't want try filing THAT claim....

I use hornet spray in the dark, after they've all returned to the nest. No flashlight, just a clear and wide open exit strategy!

 

[noodleroo]

Be sure and let us know if you got um and how you did it....

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Been reading wikipedia on yellow jackets, which led to wasps and mud daubers. Most of the yellow jackets I've encountered did not live in the ground, but rather built nests that hung on eaves and even gates or corners of buildings. They are not social, but rather tend to be solitary, they are very aggressive and will sting multiple times without provocation. Unlike bees who die when they sting, the stinger does not come off the insect. The sting is significantly mre painful than that of a bee. They build small nests like what I see described for paper wasps, but do not live in them, only lay their eggs there. They are larger than bees, generally close to an inch long, and are predominantly yellow. So, none of this really matches what is said here or in wikipedia, but is all based upon my real-life experience. So...what are my yellow jackets?

 

[noodleroo]

Quote:
We went through this too. DH has run into the ground kind three times now over the past 10 years while clearing land on the tractor. Its really dangerous when you're out in the middle of nowhere by yourself. Anyway, he took some of the 'bodies' to our local agricultural office and the 'expert' there said that they were a different species than the 'paper wasps' that build a nest under eves and such. I'd called them yellowjackets my whole life and didn't even know that there was a kind that lived in the ground besides hornets. The ground ones are really nasty; when one stings you apparently the others home in on whatever is in that venom and they hit really hard and can sting more than one time. Each time DH had to jump off the tractor and run. They'll chase you through brush and everything.