One day, I was mowing and got attacked by yellowjackets. I ran inside immediately and applied bee sting relief syrup from the first aid kit. Too late: I had four stings, and I knew what that meant. They make you plead for the sweet release of death for about 48 hours, and then they just plain hurt for another week. I later saw yellowjackets around the compost heap, and figured they built a nest in it. So I decided to dump compost in a different place; I could combine the piles in October, when hives die out for the year.
That didn't work. The next time I mowed, one stung me. I rushed into the house, peeled my shirt off, and did first aid. Then I put my shirt back on, inside out because I was delirious with pain, and heard a buzzing. I pulled the shirt back off, shook it good, and saw that yellowjacket flying around. I chased it around with a flyswatter until I killed it. It's still in the windowsill, as if it could serve as a warning to others. I hope the neighbors weren't watching as I ran around the house shirtless like a crazy woman.
So by then I was afraid to mow at all. A couple of weeks later, I found the nest. It was a hole in the ground. Consulted YouTube on what to do, and laid out my plan. I marked the spot with a tomato cage, gathered the necessary supplies, and waited for dark. After the premiere of The Walking Dead, I set out to kill.
The basement is full of things that might be useful someday, so I pulled out a window screen with a broken frame. Laid the screen over the hole and quickly weighed it down with bricks around the hole. Then I immediately dumped a half-bottle of dishwashing liquid down the hole, waited for it to seep in for a minute, then filled the hole with a water hose. Overfilled, really. The soap keeps the yellowjackets from flying, and the water drowns them. Water by itself might not reach all the nooks and crannies of the nest, but soap suds should.
The next morning, I found two yellowjackets circling the nest hole. Are they stragglers or did they escape? I didn't find a second nest entrance, and believe me, I searched for one. I hoped they would give up and fly away. Later that afternoon, I checked the nest, and saw three yellowjackets under the screen, trying to escape. Apparently the screen was weighed down pretty good! So I dumped more soap on them. Went back a few minutes later and gave them the hose treatment again.
That screen stayed over the hole for three days. Yesterday evening, I finally mowed the back yard -or at least a part of it. It was so deep that I had to dump grass clippings quite often, and it got dark before I finished. But I haven't seen any yellowjackets, so maybe I'm back in business!
Wow. Am gonna have to remember this one. I had yellow jackets that nested in my electric outdoor grill on my deck. When I plugged it in and took off the lid to put the steaks on I got swarmed! M-er F-ers stung me 8 times on my arms. each sting reaction was bigger than the last. The pain is crazy bad. Couple got in the house when I ran in and they followed me. Threw out the grill and didn't bbq anything for a year. They suck!!!
ReplyDeleteWow, Ms. Intrepid! Good for you!
ReplyDeleteIt puts the dish soap on its wings, or it gets the hose.
ReplyDelete(Sorry about the stings, MissC.)
Wow! Great ingenuity! (Or good googling, either way...) Sorry you got stung- they are mean S.O.B.s, for sure!
ReplyDeleteHope no further encounters for you, Miss C!
I'm more of a piperonyl butoxide,
ReplyDeletepermethrin, and tetramethrin guy - in a
product with a 20ft spray steam and a
dielectric breakdown voltage of 47,300,
i.e. Spectracide Pro. Take. No. Prisoners.
But hey, whatever works and good for
you. Whatever doesn't kill you makes
you stronger. Except Negan. Negan will
kill you.
Much smarter method of dealing with them than my previous neighbour.
ReplyDeleteHe found a nest in the ground right against the concrete foundation of his house.
His solution ?
Wait until dark and pour a bunch of gas down the hole.
Then add a lit match for good measure.
The concrete foundation survived but his vinyl siding didn't.
He managed to save most of the front of his house using his garden hose but what a mess.
So glad you survived & they didn't, but sorry you got stung!
ReplyDeleteMy buddy did the gas down the hole in the ground, waited an hour but could still hear buzzing. Waited another hour and still buzzing so he lit it. Blew a hole in the lawn 4 ft deep.
ReplyDeleteI’ve had Yellowjacket battles but my other problem was Wasps. Below the eve was a spotlight mounted on an electrical box. The cover for the box has a slot out to the edge for sliding under one screw and the other side has a hole big enough to fit over the screw head then a curved slot to seat the cover under the head.
I know, what did he say? The bottom line is there is a screw head size hole in the cover.
I climbed the ladder to clean the rain gutter on the back of the house. Standing on the ladder the spotlight box was about belly button height. I didn’t know what hit me when wasps came out of that little hole and stung me half a dozen times.
On the upside I hurt, but they all died along with their mothers and children and nest guests!
YOU HAVE TO CAGE YOUR TOMATOES ?
ReplyDeleteWe have to convince the little housewife out there that the tomato that ate the family pet is not dangerous!
ReplyDelete"Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes..."
ReplyDelete;-)
You betcha! American tomatoes are big and beefy, and we don't want them to get away!
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, I finished mowing the back yard this evening, and saw no yellowjackets at all!
ReplyDeleteAh, childhood memories. My old man dealt with yellow jackets by pouring gasoline down the hole and lighting it. Flaming yellow jackets would emerge from the hole and fly around until they dropped. My old man enjoyed it very much. Yeah, as soon as I was old enough I got as far away from my family as I could, they were all like that.
ReplyDeletehttps://cals.arizona.edu/yavapai/anr/hort/byg/archive/waspsandyellowjackets.html
ReplyDeleteIf you can avoid them, do. Get rid of grass lawn, too.
I found out that meat tenderizer works very well on stings. It has something to do with breaking down proteins.
ReplyDeleteI had my own run-in with yellow jackets this summer. Back in July, I was in my yard and was stung twice. I'd been talking to my husband and one of my kids and don't recall what we were doing. I didn't see what had bitten me but I knew it was not a fly or honey bee. Both bites hurt a lot for about an hour but I didn't have the horrible itching that usually appears within 12 - 24 hours after a bee sting.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I forgot about it until a few weeks ago. I was watering my flowers one morning and notice a big hole underneath a hydrangea bush. It resembled something a woodchuck or small dog might have dug and I knew it had not been there the day before. I looked into the hole and saw a bunch of yellow jackets scurrying around what appeared to be broken pieces of nest.
What type of animal, other than a bear, eats yellow jackets, I wondered. Google quickly told me that skunks love to eat yellow jackets and that they will return night after night until the nest is obliterated.
I had no proof that a skunk had been in my yard but I had seen a skunk in our neighborhood. I was hoping the skunk would solve my problem because I hadn't considered ways of eliminating the ill-tempered pests other than using poison which I wanted to avoid.
That very evening I had to run some errands and returned home shortly after dusk. As I walked into my backyard to enter through the back door, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. I'd forgotten all about the skunk but there it was under the hydrangea bush. It scurried away when a motion-sensing light on the back of the house detected me and illuminated the area.
I froze, watching the terrain around the hole. After less than a minute, the skunk emerged from under the bush. I lifted my phone to get a picture, it retreated. I waited and after several rounds of it re-emerging, me taking a pic, and it retreating, I finally got a good shot of it.
The next morning I saw that the hole was deeper but the yellow jackets weren't gone. A few days after that, I noticed that the yellow jackets were tunneling even deeper under the bush. There was now a tiny hole at the bottom of the hole that the skunk had dug and the YJs were flying in and out. I wondered if an arms race had begun that would eventually end in the destruction of my hydrangea bush.
I've never seen the skunk again but a few days ago I noticed that he/she had undoubtedly returned. There was a much deeper skunk-sized hole extending beneath the bush and no signs of YJs whatsoever. I think the problem has been solved.
Hopefully, the new larger hole isn't now an appealing condo for a family of skunks.