We would have to figure out how to exclude the foxes, raccoons, opossums, coyotes, fire ants, vultures and ringtails from walking off with the bait. Wire it to the board, nail it, and then secure the board… put it all inside poultry netting inside welded wire deer cage. Staked. I ain’t kiddin’ either.
Still, it’s a pretty good idea. I like it. I have been stung many times by yellowjackets, and chased by them (warning: they will definitely chase you if you run). So I always am ready to up my stinging-varmint-catching game.
I have been locked in battle for the last month with these:
… giant cicada killer wasps.
While the males apparently don’t sting, various interwebs sources claim that the females’ sting ranges from “no big deal” to “feels like a gunshot plus necrotizing tissue”. If they were nesting way out in the back yard, I’d just let them be, but since they are nested RIGHT NEXT TO MY FRONT STEPS and dive bomb me everytime I come near, it’s WAR!
(I’m sadly, however, not currently winning said war … )
EDIT: picture from Wikipedia; most emphatically not my hand.
Get a wet-dry shop vac with soapy water inside and the hose duct taped to a very long handle. Set the hose end butt-up close to the ingress/egress of the nest and turn on the vac about an hour or so before sunset. That’s the time when the yellow jackets return to the nest. After dark, turn off the vac and check the body count.
I tried that a year or two back to deal with a horde that set up home in a gap in some exterior molding next our front door. There had to have been thousands drowned in the water. I fired up the vac again the following day to get the stragglers. Used expandable foam to seal the hole. No more yellow jackets since.
Holy cats! Good luck with these. So they nest side by side in areas where they are able to dig their “burrows”? though these are considered solitary wasps, they also apparently are described on this page (def read the comments) as “weakly social” (what a great phrase):
I am terrified of bees, and cicada killers love my sandy soil. When they first showed up I freaked the f*** out. But they’re totally beautiful and have a cool lifecycle, so I don’t have the heart to kill them. 6 years now of running to my car for the few weeks they’re active and no stings yet. They’re pretty docile (unless you’re one of them) and the dive bombing seems to be to satisfy curiosity… A good exercise in coexistence. I would, however, not hesitate to kill yellowjackets with fire.
So happy not to have these critters around here in San Francisco.
Makes me wonder, are Yellowjackets warmer drier climate type, or are we just lucky here at the cottage?
Whats the buzz? (sorry)
Yellow jackets like to hibernate in my woodpile. Then when I bring in an armload for the stove, they wake up and instantly revert to asshole mode. I’ve become much more observant of the firewood I’m bringing in, and it’s very satisfying to load the stove with the yellow jacket infested wood first.
They all love me for some reason. I’ve been stung so many times in my life I can’t remember.
I do have a couple of the most memorable, though -
One time a yellow jacket flew in my open car window and down the back of my shirt and stung me 4 times. I drove into a parking lot, jumped out and ripped my shirt off and it flew away. The people who saw that happen must have thought me mildly insane.
I also had one fly up my shorts and sting me on my upper inner thigh when I was riding my mountain bike. I was on the way to visit my grandfather at the time and he lived near a trail a liked. Thankfully the place he was living was a senior facility that had an assisted living part with nurses and they helped me out with some kind of salve, I forget which. That frigging hurt.
)
