hcg


Yellow Jackets in the ground

While mowing the lawn, they attacked us, with no warning.

Yellow Jacket

A couple of weeks ago, my wife was passing the mower in the front yard, and I was blowing some leaves in the back yard. Over the hum of the blower, I heard my wife screaming that she was getting bit. I ran around the house towards her, but didn’t see anything till I got stung in the ankle.

Thus began our war against the yellow jackets, an ongoing one at that, but we appear to be winning for now. The internet is full of similar cases, and numerous solutions to the problem. In our case, the yellow jackets are in the ground, so we had no view of a nest to warn us, just an army of little suckers flying out from a small hole in the dirt.

We’ve tried insecticide spray, but it only kills those flying low to the ground. Boiling hot water poured down the hole slowed them a bit, but they kept coming. Plugging the hole with rocks and dirt just saw them dig themselves another way out. Finally I decided to leave a water hose running by the hole, and there seems to be a lot less of them flying around the front yard.

The nest might well be alive with new life from a queen protected by her workers, but I’ll keep a water hose running in the evening just in case. Come winter, I’ll take a shovel to the nest.

You’ve got a yellow jacket
But you’ve got no place to wear it
You wanted to go out dancing
But I wanted to stay at home