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Avoiding Yellowjackets

gtmtnbiker | Posted in General Discussion on June 27, 2005 09:40am

My house is a Cape and I need to scrape & repaint the attic gable vent which is above the upstairs bedrooms windows.  The house has vinyl siding and shutters.  These are the cheap shutters where they are hollow on the back side.  It seems that Yellowjackets enjoy making their nests there as every shutter on my house has at least one nest if not more.

In order to do my work, my ladder will have to be between the shutters. So if I do my work in the daytime, the yellowjackets are sure to be buzzing around.  Who knows, I might even have 1 or 2 nests in the gable vent.  I sure don’t wish to get stung…especially being 15 ft off the ground on a ladder.

How do you handle this situation?  Do you just ignore them and hope that you don’t get stung?

My current thought is to wait until it’s night time and do my work while they are sleeping.  Another option is to look into buying a bee keeper suit.

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  1. LisaWL | Jun 27, 2005 09:53pm | #1

    Wasp traps work pretty well if you get them in the right spot. They're the yellow traps you hang up, and inside there's a cotton ball soaked in a pheremon that attracts the wasps. They crawl inside to check it out and get trapped. when 2 or more are in the trap they kill each other. You might try putting out several a week or two before you start, and then inspect for nests and spray them. I wouldn't recommend just hoping you don't get stung because you will and it hurts.

    "A completed home is a listed home."

  2. User avater
    DDay | Jun 27, 2005 10:12pm | #2

    If you do want to spray, one thing I picked up for a discovery channel show on killer bees, is to kill them with dish soap.  The used the 2 or 3 gallon, (or whatever) pump sprayers and put some dish soap and water, then shake.  They said that the soap works better than commercial sprayers, and I'll agree to that from my experience.  The soap gets on their wings and covers them very quickly.  It create a bubble on their bodies which prevents them from flying or breathing and they're dead within 10 seconds.  The added benefit is that the soap does not stain the siding like the bee spray does.

  3. User avater
    CapnMac | Jun 28, 2005 12:49am | #3

    Best time to be near the nest or nests (and plural is very likely) is the coolest part of the night, as that's when the wasps will be most dormant (i.e., less likely to come after you).

    Now, that might be 0530 is better for you than 2130, but most of full dark seems to help.

    Wear white as much as possible; wasps, like bees, respond to dark shapes as threats.

    Spraying soap is something I've heard from exterminators recently, and would be very convenient in you case, if you had a backpack sprayer to take up the ladder.  Make sure you get thoroughly behind the entire shutter, there's likely 3-4 small nests near any larger one.

    And, from my experience, you probably ought to plan on removing the shutters, just to be sure.  Since you'll have the ladder up there anyway, it's only a couple more trips up the ladder.

    Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
  4. rbishop108 | Jun 28, 2005 02:13am | #4

    Get rid of them before you start the work!!!

    Last year we worked on a house that yellow jackets were using like Chicago O'hare airport. We set up a Ridgid vac hose right at the entrance to their nest. Sprayed the inside of the vac with hornet killer, turned on the vac, and a couple hrs later, violaaaaa, no yellowjackets!!

    There were so many they clogged the filter, but they were all dead and dying. Got 'em coming and going, funny as hell to watch 'em fly in and get sucked down the hose.

    And we weren't even working where the yellowjackets were. We did this for the homeowner, a lovely woman who had 2 young children and they had to make a mad run to get into their house all the while the yellowjackets were flying by. Wasn't much fun for them to get in and out of the house.

    Try it, you might be surprised.
    Rod

    1. User avater
      MarkH | Jun 28, 2005 03:23am | #5

      When I was a kid I saw a nicely trimmed very very dense evergreen bush with a perfectly round hole about maybe an inch or so in it. I said to the neighbor "why does your bush have a tunnel in it? (No this is not a dirty story!)

      He goes something like "got me".

      So I get real close and look in the hole.

      It's perfectly round. COOL!

      Then the hole becomes a weapon of destruction as the yellow jackets are propelled as if they were being blasted through the hole directly at my face.

      That night the entire bush got sprayed with wasp and hornet spray.

      I was OK after a few days of recovery.

      Never saw that sort of thing again. They had a nest about the size of a football inside the bush.

  5. DavidxDoud | Jun 28, 2005 03:41am | #6

    another vote for the soap solution in the sprayer - I've used it and it is as effective/quick as the areosol - - if you can spray effectively behind the shutters,  set up the night before,  get up early and catch everybody at home and somewhat torpid -

    tho I think there is some confusion on exactly what it is that you dealing with -

    there are various species of paper wasps,  of which 'yellow jackets' are one - I would not expect to find yellow jackets behind shutters,  as they prefer more tempered sites - the common paper wasps are more likely,  and they tend to be aggressive,  but number fewer than a nest of yellow jackets - mud daubers would also likely be found behind shutters,  they are rather docile and unlikely to sting -

     

    "there's enough for everyone"
  6. User avater
    basswood | Jun 28, 2005 04:38am | #7

    I once failed to notice a nest of the buggers under the eaves near the peak of a roof (about 20' off the ground). I got stung right in the middle of the forehead, while atop a ladder, trimming a tree. I must have hit about one tree branch per foot of vertical drop on my way to the ground. All those collisions produced bruises but softened the final blow at ground level. I looked like I'd told a bus load of mean drunks they were sissies.

  7. Harryd | Jun 28, 2005 05:55am | #8

    In the past I was mobbed by yellow jackets while mowing the lawn.  They were nesting in the dead roots of an old tree.

    Later a neighbor got two honeybee hives and I got the bees, most all of them..again while mowing.

    I am now deathly sensitive to both honeybees and yellow jackets. My wife does the mowing.

    Best to get rid of them.  Consequences of massive stings last a long time.

    1. gtmtnbiker | Jun 28, 2005 05:57pm | #9

      Thanks for all the advice.  The soap solution sprayer and the shopvac ideas sound like good ones.  I used the shop vac once before when I came across some sort of bee nest that was in the ground of my kids' swingset.  I put it near the entrance and just let it go.  It worked great.

      I think I will setup the ladder the night before and remove the shutters very early in the morning just to be sure.  The temps have been in the 70s at night so I might have to wait a few days until it get cool again.

      I'm pretty sure they're yellow jacket wasps.  I do know what the mud daubers look like as I've seen a few of their nests on my lawn umbrella for some reason. 

      They're yellow with black strips.  When they're flying, they seem to dangle their legs to look much bigger than they are.  Their nests look sort of like honeycombs and are made of papery material.  The size ranges from a silver dollar to 6-7 inches in diameter.

      Another trick I used in the past when I couldn't get direct access to the nest was to use those insect foggers.  I had a deck that was 2-3 feet off the ground and there was a large hornet next in between the joists (confirmed it by using a mirror on the ground).  So I waited until night time to put 2 cans of insect foggers (they came in packs of 4 for $5) directly under the nest.  In the morning, I found the ground covered with dead hornets.  Heh heh heh.

       

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