I hate Yellow Jackets!

[Baby Grand]

My Brother in-law is an entomologist and says if you kill the nest on the house and leave it, other hornets won't build near by. I killed one on the front of the house and haven't had another new nest for a couple years so far. Those are hornets though, im not sure about yellow jackets.

My wife bought some paper wasp "decoy" nests. They work just the opposite of duck decoys. Worked pretty well, but fell apart in a years time, so maybe not the best bang for the buck. It would be pretty easy to make a "grande" with an old plastic milk jug, a roll of duct tape and a black Sharpie.

 

[mvwicker]

My concern is accidentally finding another nest, I need a bee detector...
The nests in the ground are very hard to spot. Does anyone have any information on what an undisturbed nest looks like, is there a mound, do the bees frequently fly in and out. How close can you get before they start swarming.

Ran over one last year while mowing on a hot day and got stung. The opening was a round hole in the ground, no dirt piled around it. The bugs got a dose of wasp spray (when it cooled off at night) and were gone the next day.

This year there was activity in the same general area but now the nest opening was alongside a tree root. Again there was no dirt piled around. More wasp spray and this year's nest is no longer active.

Did a little reading on the web and learned that yellowjackets like to take over abandoned mouse nests rather than dig their own. That makes them hard to spot.

 

[Don87]

It might be that you have something that isn't yellow jackets and need a different type of spray. Some types of hornets look like yellow jackets and need different types of sprays. While burning and gasoline is fun neither is particularly effective & Gas leaves you with contaminated ground, which is not good if you've got a well. The right spray will make short work of them. Its possible that you had something like bald faced hornets (very nasty).

I've heard this time and time again, but the thing to remember is..................That a person is using about a cup of gasoline at the most, and most wells are well over 100 feet deep. Chances of the contamination of well water, are somewhere next to zero.

My own well is 60 feet deep, and after 17 years there is no trace of gasoline in my well water.

 

[BigE_]

Here's a fun method of dealing with them. Not quite as effective, but fun. Put the zapper right on top of the nest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Yay80hvzs