How to Get Rid of Pesky Wasps and Yellow Jackets

Now that it is summer, you are finally being able to sit outside and enjoy the nice weather and yard. Sounds great until you start to remember last year and the yellow jackets that wouldn’t leave you alone. Get rid of them this year before they ruin your summer.

How to Get Rid of Yellow Jackets

These pests really can be pests and for some people, they can be deadly pests for anyone who is allergic to their sting. Some years they are really bad and seem more aggressive. A yellow jacket is longer and bigger than a normal bee. A wasp is longer and slender and more brownish than a yellow jacket and has a dangling backside. Many times both are called wasps.

You can buy yellow jacket traps by Rescue and place one or more of these around your yard. You might have seen them already in your neighbor's yard, those yellow things hanging from trees and corner eaves of houses. 

 

Those come with a little packet of liquid that attracts the yellow jacket into the cones and they can’t get out. You pour that on a cotton ball and put it in along with a piece of meat. For meat, I have used a number of things. I think hamburger works good and I’ve also used something like a little Vienna sausage since they fit perfectly onto the little prongs inside.

Put these in a corner of your yard where you won’t be walking by all the time and an area that is free of large obstructions. You want this to be in a path the yellow jackets will fly. 

 

Some people put these on their back porch but that might be to close to where you walk all the time. And don’t put these near a known yellow jacket hive or they could really get riled up.

Best time to put these out in your yard is early in the season before the queen yellow jacket has found a home and makes a nest in your yard somewhere.

Yellow jackets usually make their nests in the ground but more than once I have seen yellow jacket nests inside storage sheds. You need to be aware of this when you mow. 

 

If you are mowing for the first time in the yard and the grass is long you could run over a nest. I have seen this before and hundreds of very angry yellow jackets is not a fun thing.

Yellow jackets can really become aggressive when you spray their nest. You have to do this at night when they are less apt to be flying all over. More than once though I have sprayed a yellow jacket nest at night and they came flying out. At night you couldn’t see them flying out at you either. 

 

I am thinking that the next time there is a large yellow jacket nest in my yard causing problems, I will call the exterminator, as I really hated dealing with them the last time at night.

You have to be careful with open drinks

Wasps

There are many types of wasps and some are beneficial, but not if they build their nest right near your door or some other high traffic area. Wasps also like to build their nests in playground equipment, remember that when you go to the playground with your kids. 

 

Rescue now makes a trap for wasps, yellow jackets and hornets, which you can see at the end of this article.

You can usually spot the nests area like you can with the yellow jacket, a high traffic area for the wasps coming and going especially near sunset. These types of wasps can be paper wasps and build their nests in the honeycomb paper type nests. 

 

If these wasps are getting to be a problem, you can spray the nest. Do this in the early morning and even better when it’s colder and maybe raining out. For nests up high, use a spray that will spray at a distance of 25’ or so. I like the foaming spray better. When you are done spraying don’t run away, walk slowly

The main objective is to kill the queens before they build nests in and around your yard.

Warning: One thing that can really ruin your day is to get stung in the mouth. Many times this happens when someone is drinking a pop or a beer and goes off and leaves the can or bottle unattended. 

 

While the beer or pop was sitting there, a bee, or a wasp or yellow jacket can get into the can, and that is how someone can get stung in the mouth. Don’t leave your open pop and beer without either covering them or watching them.

Warning: Even if you’ve been stung before and had no allergic reaction, you can have one if stung again. If someone is stung and immediately starts to feel dizzy or lose consciousness, has labored breathing, swelling of the tongue or breathing tubes, blueness of the skin or low blood pressure get them to medical attention right away. This could be anaphylactic shock, a very serious allergic reaction.

Copyright © 2009-2019 Sam Montana