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By: Stephen Bishop
Every year, it seems like I stumble upon a yellow jacket nest. This year it was in a storage room in the barn, in a paper box on a shelf. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what I had stored in that box, but whatever it was now cohabitated with carnivorous insects. Thankfully, I spotted the yellow jackets coming and going before I disturbed them. I then suited up in my beekeeper’s jacket, deployed half a can of Raid onto their entrance — and ran.
As best I could tell, this had the effect of killing a couple of yellow jackets (possibly, they died from laughter), but a steady stream of yellow jackets still came and went, seemingly unperturbed by my attack.
So I bought a bug bomb, chucked it into the room, closed the door — and ran again. That was before I went on vacation for a week, and when I got back yellow-jackets were still coming and going, seemingly unperturbed by my chemical bombardment.
At our beekeeper’s meeting for that month, the topic of yellow jacket traps came up. In general, beekeepers are not big fans of yellow jackets, which harass and eat our beloved honey bees, which is why we meet monthly to talk about such things as our favorite recipes for yellow jacket traps.
“I use half a cup of brown sugar and grape juice,” one beekeeper said.
“I use sugar and vinegar and a banana peel,” said another, “the banana peel keeps the bees out of the trap.” The trap in this case is a milk jug, with a little door cut into it.
To be honest, I’ve never done much yellow-jacket trapping (mostly just yellow-jacket stumbling), but you’re never too old to learn. The idea behind trapping yellow jackets is to trap them early in the season, when the queens are out house hunting for prime real estate, like paper boxes in a barn. If you can trap the queen, that is one less nest to stumble upon later. As best I can tell from the discussion, trapping yellow jackets later in the season is mostly just done for sport, to see how many yellow jacket workers you can bag. (Meanwhile, big game trappers are hunting for the ones with the biggest antennae).
I may try trapping next year, but this late in the year it won’t catch the queen. So I spent a lot of time at night thinking about what to do to get rid of the yellow jackets in the paper box in the barn. The best I could come up with was old-timey suffocation.
What could go wrong?
Well, the box was sitting on a shelf. I easily placed a black contractor trash bag over the top of the box to begin my murderous plot. However, whatever was in the box was heavier than I expected, so picking the box up to work the trash bag around and underneath the box was difficult and taking more time than I predicted. Meanwhile, the yellow jackets inside the box were audibly roaring while those returning to their nest had detected my presence and seemed to be generally confused, if not dismayed, that I was trying to asphyxiate their family. I looked down and several yellow jackets were trying to ventilate my blue jeans by poking holes in them.
I ran prematurely.
So now in the barn storage room, there is a paper box with a trash bag draped partially over it, with yellow jackets now coming and going as pretty as the please out of the opening in the trash bag. Sigh.
At this point, I’ve decided to just let Mother Nature take care of the yellow jackets and freeze them out. They have suffered enough, and I am tired of running.
For more misadventures in agrarian living, check out Stephen’s work and subscribe to his free Substack newsletter at misfitfarmer.com.
