I hate Yellow Jackets!

   / I hate Yellow Jackets! #1  

PHIL850

Silver Member
Joined
Apr 2, 2006
Messages
135
Location
MASS and Northeast kingdom of VT
Tractor
JD 850
Finally got the clutch fixed in my JD 850, and was brush-hogging around our
place to get some clean up done. I have a 5' IMO Brush hog that will take a beating
and keep on ticking. I lowered it away on some brush and was beating up the stuff and of course when you do such a thing, it throws up a lot of dust and crud. All of a sudden I notice that the crud it was throwing up was a mass of Yellow Jacketes (ground bees).
Being very allergic to these things, I pulled out of there as fast as I could. Of course being in low range that isn't very fast! I got about 20' away and shut off the PTO, killed the throttel, and abandond ship. How I didn't get stung I'll never know.

Now the wife won't let be mow the field untill we get a good hard Frost!

Oh well!

Phil C.
 
   / I hate Yellow Jackets! #2  
Seen a few around here but they have not gotten thick as fleas yet unless I have just been lucky. They will most likely be here later this month.
 
   / I hate Yellow Jackets! #3  
Several years back I ran over a nest on my 8N, got stung 22 times. I was buzzing like a bee myself. A couple of weeks ago I dug one up with the Deere, only got popped three times. I have hit nests two more times since, but did not get the first sting. I was covered with Deet those times, don't know if that had anything to do with it or not.
 
   / I hate Yellow Jackets! #4  
I hate yellow jackets as bad as copperheads and with yellow jackets I take the scorched earth approach. I hate yellow jackets did I say that already? Well I really do.
 
   / I hate Yellow Jackets! #5  
FWIW I heard that parking a walk behind mower over the nest, running of course, will agitate the yellow jackets to come out and the running mower will anihilate them and leave no evidence.
 
   / I hate Yellow Jackets! #6  
I got hit but good once too...I took every burnable liquid I could find, poured it in the hole and lit it. I think the straight 50 racing oil worked best:D

My former neighbor was allergic to them. He got hit 45 times. He woke up at 3am swollen like the michelin man. The ER doc told him that the obscene amount of Budwiser in his system probably saved his life because the booze acted like an ani-venom. So there's some advice for you:D
 
   / I hate Yellow Jackets! #7  
Last summer I was mowing one of the fields on the back of my mom's farm. About half way down one side I noticed that I was coming up on a mound of dirt. Since we have fire ants here in the South, I didn't think much about it when the dust flew as I cut the top of the mound off. I went on around the field and as I got near where I cut the top off the mound of dirt, I saw what looked like a small black cloud above the damaged mound. When I got a little closer, I could tell what I did. I had cut the top off of a Bumble Bee mound....:eek:

They acted like they were mad...can't imagine why... :rolleyes:

Mike
 
   / I hate Yellow Jackets! #8  
FWIW I heard that parking a walk behind mower over the nest, running of course, will agitate the yellow jackets to come out and the running mower will anihilate them and leave no evidence.

Trust me, all you do is run the mower out of gas and give the yellow jackets a Hornet attitude.
 
   / I hate Yellow Jackets! #9  
How would you like to discover this nest in your car? :)
yellowjacketslarge.jpg
 
   / I hate Yellow Jackets! #10  
I hate yellow jackets too.

My son and family are coming up from Jersey next week to visit and plan on staying in my camper. On Saturday I started to clean out the camper which is parked in the side yard about 50 feet from the house in between some trees. There was already some junk on the ground (old tonneau cover, TV antenna, bottles and cans etc. so I got in the trailer and started throwing more junk out the door and onto the pile. Then I brought the tractor around and loaded up the bucket with the junk, hopped on the tractor and headed toward the garage to bag it all up. As I got off the tractor I felt a sharp pain in the lower left side of my stomach. At first I thought I over did the bending over and felt another pain in the same area. I looked down and saw a yellow jacket on my shirt and assumed it had stung me. I gave it a good smack and it fell to the ground. That's when I felt another sting by my shirt pocket and saw another yellow jacket. I swatted it to the ground to step on it. When I looked down I saw about 20-30 YJ's on my pants legs trying to sting me. Fortunately they missed. I got some brake cleaner spray and sprayed them off my pants stepping on them as they fell. Had anyone been watching they would have thought I was doing a rain dance or something.

Turns out they had built a ground nest under the tonneau cover and didn't like it when I moved it. I walked back toward the camper only to see a swarm of thousands like a big black cloud. I shot two full cans on wasp and hornet spray (the 20' shot cans) and then tried spraying them with gasoline in a pump up sprayer. After the two cans of spray and gas the black cloud did not appear any smaller. I figured it either wasn't affecting them or as fast as I was killing them more came out to replace them. I decided to call it a day for that job. Went back out after dark to douse the hole but with all the gas and spray residue on the ground they were still swarming at 9PM.

I let things calm down till today and checked the area again. No big swarm but still several flying around. Too many to get close enough to do anything. Guess I'll have to wait a few more days and get a flame thrower or something. I figure the nest must be 3-4 years old and pretty big.

I did get enough time on Sunday to back under the trailer hitch with the tractor and pull it out and over by the garage to finish that cleaning out.

Tractorbeam, What a waste of a good 55 Chevy
 
 
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