Yellow Jackets!

[Xtarheel]

A push mower works if you're so inclined. I've done that a few times. Start the mower and run it close to idle to keep the noise and fuel consumption down. Push it oer the hole, come back later. It will royally piss them off and they will just ground up like burger meat. They will come out of the hole because of the noise and vibration and attack the mower. The majority will never make it out alive, the rest will try to get back into the nest so they die coming and going. I like to lay a board over the discharge to help keep them in.

I'm not a fan of gasoline. I watched a good size of ground explode from lighting it. So if you use gas, don't light it.
My grandfart poured about a gallon down a hole once. He waited a good ten minutes and then poured a trail back about fifteen feet. When it reached the hole and chunk of ground the size of a basket ball blew out of the ground.
Sure it was cool as heck but I was a kid sooooo...... Not as cool anymore being as I don't heal as fast as I used to.

Never heard of using a lawn mower, but this reminded me of a story my mother told about her brother and yellow jackets. When my mom was seven and her brother David was eight, he was stung by several yellow jackets. Uncle David gave her a slender stick and told her to shove it down the hole and he would cut the SOB's heads off as they came out. Needless to say it didn't turn out very well. Mom was stung about 20 times and ran and jumped in the river where she nearly drowned. Uncle David stayed at the hole until their dad came and got him. Uncle David was stung about 70 times and nearly died. Mom told this story many times, but it always made me smile when I thought about Uncle David's persistence.

[Murgatroy]

Gas `em.

 

 

I grew up in the hills, we would sled all the time, without snow. You just sled down the mountain in a plastic sled.

 

Lots of fun for young kids.

 

One day my cousin, his little sister and I were sledding down the mountain behind his house, in that order on the sled. We started going too fast, so I reached out and grabbed a small tree to get off the sled. Jennie, in the middle, grabbed my legs and Mark just kept going. Turns out that tree was about six foot above a rather large yeller jacket nest.

 

I got stung once or twice, but poor Jennie, she must have been hit a few dozen times.

 

 

 

 

 

Mark made it to the bottom of the mountain safely.

 

 

 

 

We gassed them bastards off of our mountain.

[Trekbike]

Gas did the trick for me. I was weed eating some tall grass by a lake several years ago and hit a nest in the ground. I didn't realize it until they started stinging me. Got me more than a dozen times. They were on me so bad I almost jumped in the lake but it was about 7 ft down a rock bank otherwise I would have.

[K191145]

What I thought were wasps hitting me last week were actually yellow jackets. The exterminator came out last week and he did find a wasps nest up behind the rain gutter. I thought the problem was solved until yesterday.

 

I found the nest in the ground after I went over it again with the mower and got stung AGAIN - multiple times. I woke up this morning to see my right hand swollen up like a small grapefruit.

 

I sprayed wasp and hornet spray down into the hole last evening, but I don't know if that's going to do the job or not. Should I call the exterminator or just go get some spray that is intended specifically for yellow jackets and hit 'em again tonight after they go to sleep?

 

If you were stung several times by them then be careful the next time you get stung and watch for an allergic reaction. Many years ago my dad was stung about 8 times after mowing over a nest, he didn'r experience any reaction other than a small bumb where he got stung. He thought he killed the nest but the same thing happened the next year, got hit about 12 times. He came inside and got sick at his stomach and then passed out, we called the ambulance and took him to the ER where they gave him Benadryl and ephinephrin, he was dizzy the rest of the day and nauseated. He had to keep an ephinephrin shot handy after that in the fridge in case he got stung again. Seems that the doctor told him that getting stung the first time made him allergic to the second time.

[daddyo]

Yep, years of living out in the country and slowly reclaiming lawn from grown up bushes and locust trees, I ran into many nests. Lighting the gasoline was always a reward revenge for the stings incurred.

 

- OS

 

FIFY  :cool:

[Oh Shoot]

FIFY  :cool:

 

True, thanks.

 

I never could decide which was the worst thing to get stung by, seems I've been stung or bit by the majority of insects we have in TN, and at least one arachnid (scorpion). I think them solid red wasps rank right near the top in both immediate and lasting pain. I remember the scorpion wasn't any worse than say a yellow jacket but it did seem like that just stung feeling lasted a long time after.  Never really had any significant reaction to any of them, though, but haven't been stung much by anything in the last decade, I know folks systems can change at any time.

 

Now, I never got popped by one of those big ole solitary Cicada Killers, but my then wife got tagged by one on the hand, and her arm swelled up alarmingly. We decided to seek help if it went past her elbow, but she recovered over the next couple days. Now, really, even though they certainly look like death on wings, those babies aren't supposed to be anything special venom or pain wise, and she said the sting didn't hurt all that much. But she sure had a scary reaction, and hadn't had one from being stung by anything before, which was not all that infrequent.

 

- OS

[mikegideon]

I hate wasps, and keep my eyes peeled for them. With that said, yellow jackets are the ones that wind up getting me, twice in the face. Maybe it's because I slap the hell out of them when they land. Not the worst sting out there. They just seem to get it done, maybe because they're a little faster than other wasps.

[BrasilNuts]

I hadn't been stung by a yellow jacket in 20 years, I read this thread day before yesterday and of course got poped by one today. It got me on the inside of my right elbow, but I was lucky, I looked where I had been standing and there lay my limb cutters in a swarm of them.

[daddyo]

I poured kerosene down the hole last night. Today I see no sign of them.

 

But, just to be sure, I'm going to crank up the push mower and push it over the hole, then stand back and watch to see if anything happens.

[mikegideon]

I poured kerosene down the hole last night. Today I see no sign of them.

 

But, just to be sure, I'm going to crank up the push mower and push it over the hole, then stand back and watch to see if anything happens.

 

Maybe it will gin up a good enough cloud of fumes to launch that mower into the next county  :up:  Get video!

[K191145]

Got stung on the arm once by a saddleback catipiller in a patch of corn, that was a painful sting, burning like scaulding water being poured over your arm.

[Guest The Itis]

I have one of those traps that they sell at the store, little box with some sticky fluid inside, supposedly attracts them and they crawl in and get stuck and die.

 

It does not work at all. There are beginnings of wasp nests near it and no wasps in it.

 

 

Maybe it's just an old trap or something, idk. Anyone use these things with success?

[Oh Shoot]

I have one of those traps that they sell at the store, little box with some sticky fluid inside, supposedly attracts them and they crawl in and get stuck and die.

 

It does not work at all. There are beginnings of wasp nests near it and no wasps in it.

 

 

Maybe it's just an old trap or something, idk. Anyone use these things with success?

 

Might work for yellow jackets, as they seem to have quite the sweet tooth. Ever notice that they're always the ones on empty soda bottles? The bottle recycling bin at the Kroger I go to generally has a lot of them in the summer, but seldom see any other species doing same.

 

Thing about yellow jackets though, is that there may be a bazillion more of them in a nest than in any wasp nest or even a sizable hornet's nest.

 

- OS

Edited August 7, 2013 by Oh Shoot