Yellowjackets! Good grief, how do you even care for your lawn??

[bzymom]

My poor son went out to mow our grass earlier, and ran in a short time later sporting multiple stings AND yellowjackets still hanging on him.  (Shiver :svengo: )  We have about an acre and a half, but only about 3/4 acre to mow.  

 

We have all been stung over the past several years hitting nests.  Mowing the grass, blowing leaves, pulling weeds.  Different areas of the yard each time.

 

I am so over all of this.  I feel badly sending my sons out to do yardwork.  I used to do a lot of gardening, but after last year, I am not touching it.  We have an exterminator who comes every two months and who I can call if I know of a nest, but that doesn't prevent episodes like today's!  

 

Are we just living in some sort of yellowjacket sanctuary??  This cannot be happening to everybody all the time!   I don't know what in the world we can do, and am concerned someone is really going to be hurt.  So far no allergic reactions, but my boys do have other allergies, and I know it can happen at any time.

 

Would love some suggestions!

 

 

[FriedClams]

Watch from a distance. You'll see the nest (hole in the ground) pretty easily. After dark, you'll need to treat the nest. They go into the nest at sunset so waiting until after dark makes sure you get them all.

 

ETA - one nest can house a lot of yellow jackets. I once ran over one and had about 8 stings and more following me.

[Sandragood1]

I'm not sure how you can do this, but if you can get paper wasps to nest in a tree in your yard the yellow jackets should avoid nesting there. Twice now we have had summers free from stinging insects (yellow jackets and hornets ) and when the leaves fell in the fall we found a large paper wasp nest in our front tree.

 

The paper wasps are so low key we didn't even know they were there.

 

Also I have seen fake paper wasp nests that you can put in your tree but I have no idea how well they work.

 

I hope you can stop the yellow jackets from ruining your enjoyment of your yard,

 

Sandra

[MotherGoose]

We used to have them a lot when I was growing up. We would also look for them flying around like little flies hovering over food. My father would pour gasoline on the nest (thoroughly non-environmentally friendly!) I have them in the flower beds occasionally and I try to avoid the area till they leave/die off during the winter. Not practical in a lawn. The best thing to do is to look for them, and to treat them in some appropriate manner. Have your kids inspect the lawn before mowing for yellow jackets. They may enjoy it!

[1GirlTwinBoys]

Now I don't want to go out in our yard... :huh: Scary stuff on this board.

[BlsdMama]

I'm aching to know if you are in the Midwest or on the West coast. We have yellow jackets in the Midwest.... And then we spent time on the West coast with these ferocious, meat eating, ornery, victim seeking things that people called yellow jackets. Nasty mean spirited rotten bugs.

[skimerinkydo]

Put out a yellow jacket trap, that's what we do.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Rescue-YJTR-DT12-Reusable-Yellow-Jacket/dp/B00004TBKI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405824122&sr=8-1&keywords=yellow+jacket+trap

[Shellydon]

Just make sure you find and kill the nest.  We kill 10 or so each summer.

[Melissa in Australia]

:grouphug:

[Katy]

I've sacrificed some clear pyrex glass mixing bowls to deal with them.  I watched from a distance to see where the hole was, and snuck out after dark and inverted a bowl over the hole, then put a heavy rock on top.  We'd called several exterminators first but no one wanted to deal with them.  Once we put a bowl over the hole we never saw one again - I read that if you put poison down they might decrease for a few weeks but eventually they dig a new hole.  But if you put a glass bowl over the hole the glass confuses them and they swarm against the glass and exhaust themselves to death rather than digging a new hole.

 

No answers on how to prevent them, though I agree that in houses I struggled with paper wasps we never saw yellow jackets, so there might be something to that.