I did a video (link below) about dealing with yellow jackets when I first started the channel a couple of years ago. But I’m noticing on social media now since this is the height of yellow jacket season a lot of people are asking again how to get rid of yellow jackets on their feeders.
So I figured that this would be a good time to redo the video in order to get this information out there. Rest assured that if you want to get rid of your yellow jackets there’s a way. I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is you can solve your yellow jacket problem once and for all. The bad news is you have to solve the problem in the spring.
Most yellow jacket colonies don’t survive the winter. The queen leaves at the end of the season and she goes out and finds a place where she can hibernate for the winter and that’s usually either in an old tree stump under a log, in an old rodent hole or somewhere where she’s not going to freeze. Then in the spring she comes out of her little hiding place and starts looking for a place to build her nest. This is the time to solve your yellow jacket problem because if you catch the queen there’s not going to be any nest.
I used to have a place up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the mountain range between Nevada and California and my place was midway between Reno and Lake Tahoe. My property was backed up to a large swath of untouched federal land, apparently filled with yellow jacket nests. The first summer I was up there I couldn’t even eat a sandwich on the patio because there were yellow jackets everywhere.
I went out and bought a bunch of yellow jacket traps and hung them and I must have caught thousands of yellow jackets. But then what I did is in the spring (it was actually in March when the snow was disappearing from the ground) I hung these traps out again and guess what I caught: 16 queens. The following summer I could have a whole picnic out in the backyard and I wasn’t bothered by yellow jackets anymore.
There are many different kinds of yellow jacket traps. They still sell the reusable one (RESCUE! Reusable Yellowjacket Trap – paid link) but the new ones have plastic bags attached to them so the yellow jackets end up in the bag (RESCUE! Disposable Yellowjacket Trap – paid link) and you don’t even have to empty them you just toss the whole thing in the trash.
If you’ve caught a queen she’s very easy to identify. The Queens are much larger than the workers, they don’t have stingers, but at the end of their abdomen they have a flat area which is called the ovipositor. That’s where the eggs come out. She has two sets of wings, so if you’ve caught a queen there will be no confusion, you will know it’s a queen.
I must add this information: the yellow jackets are a part of the ecosystem and they play a positive role. They feed their young the remains of nasty caterpillars and flies that attack crops so they really do have a positive effect and they have their role in the environment. But when they go unchecked they’re a little hard to coexist with.
They can be dangerous, as they’re very very aggressive. These Yellow Jackets will sting you multiple times because they don’t lose their stingers like honeybees do after they sting you. They’re aggressive and they will chase you to protect their nest. If you have kids playing on your property and you have a yellow jacket nest, the children can be in danger.
Now there’s a ton of information on the internet of how to get rid of yellow jacket nests. They sell foam that kills them that you’re supposed to squirt down the hole you see them coming out of and some people pour gasoline in and light it on fire.
Every single video starts with showing you how to get dressed to protect yourself when you’re trying to get rid of the yellow jacket nest. It seems to me that it would be a lot easier just to prevent the nests from being built in the first place.
Catch the queens in the spring! Don’t forget to mark your calendars because you’re going to want to remember this when the time comes.
Relevant products in this article (paid links):
RESCUE! Reusable Yellowjacket Trap – 2 Pack + 2 Ten-Week Refills
RESCUE! Disposable Yellowjacket Trap – Central & Eastern Formula – 2 Traps
RESCUE! Disposable Summer Yellowjacket Trap – Central & Eastern Formula – 6 Traps
