Yellowjackets -- the wasp/hornet

^^^way to mess up another thread with your political ravings^^^ i'm sure at least tochatihu will be entertained.
had a small nest in a young maple tree in our front yard back in may i think. zapped it with the icbm wasp spray and it was on the ground in tatters the next morn. last year in the tree next to it, i didn't see them until it was too late.

 

Along this line of thought, I think it may be time to establish a 8-10' death zone for crawlies around the perimeter of the house. Looks like there's some good powders out there like D-fense. Haven't used it previously, but seems to have good reviews. Anyone with hands on experience?

 

if anyone ever invents a barrier for mice, they'll make a fortune

 

That was last fall. The nest was gone, but the ladies seemed to have settled on my shed as a nice place to overwinter and possibly build again in the spring.

I wasn't fully on board with their site selection, so I looked into making it less attractive. I started coming by in late winter and early spring and leaving the doors open, so it seemed less secluded than they thought. They were still kind of lethargic, but eventually flew off.

I had heard that pennyroyal oil doesn't please them, so I swabbed some of that on the parts of the shed door and ceiling where they liked to hang out.

Nonetheless, for a while I was checking every few days and would often see two or three of them scouting out the location again. (I had not been clipping little tags to them or anything, so I don't know if these were the same ones coming back, or others new in the area saying "hey, check out that secluded little shed!".)

If I didn't check often enough, I could sometimes open the doors and see a little 4- or 5-cell nest under construction, with one or two wasps toiling away at it. it wouldn't be big enough yet for any adult to fit in, so after a hard day's labor, they would just curl up on the outside of it and call it a night.

I would then come back around midnight, lift a glass jar around the starter nest, slide a sheet of card stock across the top to drop the nest and its one or two guardians into the jar, and walk around the house and leave the jar in the front yard. And go back to the shed and put more pennyroyal oil there.*

They didn't seem to get very agitated, and maybe don't regard glass or card stock as an obvious rival or predator, so their attitude was roughly ")yawn( huh, how'd our nest get down here?".

I had to do that about four times, several days apart. Again, I don't know if it was the same ones trying again, or different ones. But now my shed is wasp- and nest-free, seemingly for this season, at least.

I noticed that a wasp thinking ")yawn( huh, how'd our nest get down here?" inside of a glass jar tends to instinctively explore upward. That didn't seem ideal, as they'd be pretty near the mouth of the jar when I was ready to set it down and take the card stock away. So I started just holding the jar upside down while I walked around to the front yard. They'd be exploring the far end of the jar then, and I'd just lay it on the ground and walk away. They didn't take any interest in me. I'd go out in the morning and collect the jar.


* I really don't even know whether that stuff displeases them or not. Now that I have some, the internet seems to agree that peppermint oil is the thing they really don't savor.

 

They are benneficial insects and they aren't hurting you or causing any problem... By your own account you're clearly harming their population numbers and you need to reflect on all this senseless and needless killing you're engaged in. Making insects go instinct with too much killing only creates problems. It doesn't solve them.