Yellow Jackets

[M Q]

I have a bit of a yellow jacket problem. Through luck, I managed to find 3 yellow jacket nests near the back of my house, which I have eliminated (the nests, not the house!), yet the yellow jacket traps that I have still keep filling up. And there still seems to be plenty of yellow jackets buzzing around whenever we try to have a meal outside.

1) Do the yellow jacket traps actually trap a significant portion of yellow jackets, or are they just to keep homeowners busy and lighten their wallets?

2) Is there a better way? Either some way to find the nests, or else some poisoned bait that they take back to their nests? (I know there is slow poison bait for ants that they supposedly take back to their nets.)

[Lar]

Wondering if you had three paper wasp nests and not yellow jackets...but with the yellow jacket traps you will only trap a small percentage of a wasps from a nest. The traps are basically aids to attract the foraging wasps away from areas of your yard. Yellow jackets will nest in voids, and usually aren't found until the numbers are so great their activity is easily seen or the vegetation hiding their activity dies back in the Fall. just guessing there is not a "bait" due to you would be blindly killing out beneficial insects, rather than just the occasional problem nest.

Lar

[Frank]

You need to eliminate nests as you are doing. Yellow jackets can nest all over the place, in the ground, in bushes, in cracks in the house, etc. What I do not know is how effective baited traps are in drawing in other yellow jackets. Best not to place traps too close to where you eat as they may just draw them in to the spot. Frank

[SteveB]

I have two at my cabin. They are a simple affair, and one could easily duplicate them for nearly free. They consist of a plastic mayonnaise jar, and a lid that has four holes in it. They go in, and can't get out. They fall into the liquid and drown. Take an old mayonnaise jar, drill four holes in the top, put in four pieces of tube of some sort, and JB weld them in place. Or, just be lazy and go buy some.

They sure as heck work. The best bait to use is apple juice. I've tried everything from beer to root beer to 7Up to orange soda pop. Apple juice is the best.

And be advised if you're outside where there's yellow jackets, they WILL go into your cold drink can or bottle. A friend got stung in his mouth. He was jumping and whooping and hollering, and we were all clapping and stomping to the rhythm until we found out what his problem was. Now, I put a plastic cat food lid over my drink when outside, and advise you to do the same. Clean the lid first.

Steve

[Phisherman]

I use hornet/wasp spray just after dusk to saturate the nest. The next day they are gone. Watch the hornets to find the nest--it could be in a crack, the ground, cement blocks, under eaves, etc. Never have used a trap for hornets and it's my guess that they would not be too effective on colonized insects.

[M Q]

...

The 3 nests were in the ground and were pretty likely yellow jackets. I do occasionally find paper wasp nests hanging from eaves and other places. They don't seem to be the nuisance that yellow jackets are. ...but

I even tried tying a red thread to small pieces of meat to try to track the YG back to the nest. One landed 20 ft. away until he could chew the load down to size. The others I seemed to have lost pretty quickly. It seemed worth a try.

[Bob F]

Would this stop people from putting their cigarette butts into your beer can also?

[coffee]

I just finished an episode with a hornet nest (rather large) in my front lawn. I had a problem with moles and the bees found the holes to be a great place to start a nest. They had 4 holes to the nest. I went down to HD and bought some sevin-5 and basically filled the holes with it. That was on a saturday and today (sunday) I see only about 3 or 4 flying around looking to get into the nest and thats it.

Im interested in hearing anyone elses view on sevin-5 also. I looked it up on the internet and alot of people tend to use it.