Ouch! These things are vicious. Hubs ran over an underground nest yesterday with the lawnmower. This was in our front yard. He was stung multiple times. He came to tell me about where I was gardening in the back yard. Some followed him! I was stung twice, once through my denim jeans. We retreated to the house, took Benadryl, applied hydrocortisone cream, and iced the stings. I'm fine, just itchy, red, and a little swollen at the sting sites. He is worse off though. His right hand is swollen about twice the normal size. No symptoms of severe allergic reaction, but... I think he should see a doctor tomorrow, he thinks not. We don't normally use poisons and are into organic gardening, etc., including tolerance of beneficial creepy crawleys, but this is WAR. We can't coexist with them, not in that location. The nest is right on the property line by our elderly neighbor's driveway and he walks by there at least twice a day for the paper and his mail. The first round of insecticide has been shot into the nest after dark and there has been no activity around it since. Anybody else had problems with these critters? See what happens when you aren't out motoring?
My wife disturbed a nest yesterday while cleaning the bird bath. Fortunately she wasn't stung (this time). The wasps are still flying formation around the birdbath, so the birds are not going in there for awhile. It also happened a couple years ago moving a rock and she got 5 stings. She took a Benadryl, but didn't react to them very much - just small red bumps. I get it a lot worse.
Make sure they are not africanized bees. They can kill a person. I had a bad encounter with yellow jacket wasps as a kid. Dumb me disturbed a nest. As far as treating the nest goes I'd recommend doing it in the very last light of day, almost dark. Most critters will be in the nest drinking beer & your chances of success are greater. Be careful & get hubby to the doctor...
I've had several encounters with those underground nests. What you did is the best way to handle them. You might have to hit them again in a couple of days depending on how big the nest is and how resilant the little buggers happen to be. The last nest I had in my yard took two treatments to eradicate.
I have felt your pain, I hate Yellow Jackets! I was stung 17 times at once when I was a kid and stumbed into a nest. When I locate a nest in my yard I take a stick and approch it, (going in low so as not to be in their flite path) then I lay the stick down at the entrance hole so I can find it after dark. It's good to stay at least 6 foot away from it or they get nosey. At night they all return to the nest because they don't fly at night. Then after dark I pay them a visit with about half a soup can of gasoline. As you approach the hole with a flashlight you can see the guards at the entrance, they will not leave. I pour the gas right down the hole and put the empty can over it, kills every last one of those little BAS#@%DS. I have killed off large nests of them without a single sting, one nest I found and destroyed had made a cavity in the ground the size of a soccer ball with thousands of them in it, all dead after my visit.
Weird... My wife was in the yard yesterday and got stung by a yellow jacket.... Hope hub's get's better...
I am allergic to bee stings and carry an epipen with me, started as a child got bit and hand swelled, went to hospital. Had a friend in the Triumph club die from bee stings in his own back yard, never made it in the house for help. Get it checked!
Since I have gotten older I am now highly allergic to bee stings. I never was as a kid but now that highly allergic they are my mortal enemy. I was stung once, walking into a hospital, in the the neck while I was taking my Mother to a Dr. appt. and within 5 min I was out cold on the floor in a Dr.'s waiting room. I woke up to my shirt cut off of me and being the source of a STAT code Blue. I was ruched down to the ER after someone stuck me with 3 needles right on the floor to bring me back. When I say I am highly allergic I mean I have a half hour to get to the hospital after I am stung even after I use an EpiPen. (Epinephrine Auto-Injectors) When I have to fight the war on bees I fight to WIN. To get rid of them once and for all I find that filling the hole with 2 gal of gas and lightng it works well. I do this at night when they are sleeping or less active. Yeah I am a little bit of a pryo but it gets the job done and I am still alive. :mad5::ihih::lol:
Make sure your family & friends know where you keep your epipen in case you cannot get to it yourself. Stay away from the bees guys!
Everyone knows the Epipen is in my glove box in the MINI. I get new ones all the time. Trust me I have a line of people that want to stab me in the neck with it. :lol::lol::lol: I say no it has to go in my leg but they insist on my neck. :eek6::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:
Wow! Thanks for the replies. Hubs is much better and the swelling is starting to go down. I've learned a lot about these meanies in the past couple of days. One thing I didn't know is that every time someone is stung by yellow jackets (wasps) or bees they can become more sensitive to the venom, meaning every encounter raises the risk of an full blown allergic reaction like Dave.O experienced. Like Mr. Jim and Dave.O, I think we should have a couple of EpiPens around because next time it could be much worse. Thanks for all the suggestions on eradicating the nest. The gasoline method is the good ole boy, sure fire approach but hubs decided to go with Raid. The pyro in me was a bit disappointed. I don't know that one is method is "greener" than the other. I have read to treat with Raid 3 nights in a row, but we are just watching it now. Apparently the larvae in there are pretty well protected, as is the queen, and a new batch could be hatching out. So, any activity and we will zap it again tonight. I have read quite a bit of information posted by etymologists from various universities. Starting in late summer, yellow jackets become more aggressive and dangerous until they are killed off by a freeze. They are changing their diet from protein to sugar as they are prepping new larval queens for overwintering and hatching out less workers. They are very, very cranky from here until cold weather. Aren't we all? I recall that I disturbed a nest a couple of months ago while pruning azaleas. I think I got one sting. Anyway, they buzzed around the entrance for while but didn't chase me or act aggressively. I never thought about it again or considered eradicating them until this incident. This time their behavior was entirely different and our visceral reaction was that they must DIE. Odd, but I have gone back to find the azalea nest and it's gone! I wonder why they abandoned it? Yellow jackets are beneficial to gardens as they prey on other insects that eat prized plants. They eat caterpillars. Since I have a butterfly garden and attract lots of butterflies, this might explain why, although I see the butterflies lay eggs, I rarely find caterpillars on the larval plants which I grow just for that purpose. I thought lizards and spiders were getting them, and maybe they are, but now I think yellow jackets may be in on the action. Metalman and grodengraive, tell your gardening wives to be careful out there! That nest by the birdbath sounds potentially dangerous. I've read several accounts this weekend of birdbaths being unusable as the yellow jackets prevent the birds from getting near it. Yellow jackets don't drop their stinger when they sting, so one yj can sting repeatedly. When they sting, they mark their victim with a pherome that stimulates the others to attack. If you kill one the same pherome is released, inciting the others to find and attack the mark. So, don't swat them, just back away quietly if you come up on a nest. This explains why hubs was followed all the way around the house after being stung at least 4 times. Once we are certain the nest is dead, I plan to dig it up. I always assumed they tunneled like ants, but they build paper nests underground, just like their wasp cousins build above ground. That fascinates me. Something in me just wants to poke at that nest. YouTube has lots of entertaining and scary vids of yellow jackets. Be careful out there! This is suburban warfare!
You could always use a about 6 cans of Sterno...poor mans Napalm. :idea: :ihih: :mad5: :ihih: :lol: Bye Bye Bees......:lol:
Or, if you're like me and you don't know an underground YJ nest is there until you run over it with the lawn mower and you've already been stung at least once, you abandon the mower and run for the house in a panic weaving through obstacles (rather than tripping over them...hopefully) and screaming obscenities as you go! I hate the little bastiges! I was out walking a couple weeks ago and got stung. I'd been on the pavement for at least a half mile, never even stepped on the grass beside the road. I felt something on my hand and before I could even turn my head to see what it was I felt the sting. Knowing from past encounters (and research) not to swat it, I shook it off my hand as I began my now traditional running and screaming of obscenities routine. The things have a nasty temperament and in my experience it's not possible to coexist in an urban environment. I'm only mildly allergic so far but I'd hate to think what would happen if one of my elderly neighbors or some little kid ran into them. So I wipe out every nest I find and make no excuses. FWIW, pyros among us won't like this advice but you don't need flame to kill with gasoline or kerosene, the fumes kill the bugs. It's safer too, obviously. :wink: That's why it only takes about a cup, plenty of killing fumes. I use the Raid-type sprays. Spray once, watch carefully for a few days, spray again as necessary. After following the directions on the cans and learning that a few seconds of spray never works, I now use at least a quarter of a can at a time, bare minimum.
Running over the nest with a lawn mower seems to be the A+ #1 way to really make them mad. Looks like that's the best method if you want to rile the whole nest up. I have read accounts of mowers being abandoned near the nest with the motor running. The YJs swarm and attack the mower, making it impossible to retrieve it or shut it off. The you just have to wait for it to stall or run out of gas and then for night fall when all good little YJs return to the pad.
If you really want to freak yourself out........ [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7sJ5TZsJ-Q]Basic Insect Anatomy - Asian Giant Hornet Suzumebachi - YouTube[/ame]
Working on commercial rooftop HVAC equipment I have encountered many yellow jacket/wasp nests. You can usually spot them quickly but sometimes they are behind service panels and when you pop it off it can be quite the surprise. We had some pretty good spray that instantly dropped them as soon as they got hit. Only time I was ever stung was actually by a regular bee from a nest in a wall. The entrance was at the hole around the pipe for the water spigot. I turned it on and I swear it came flying out stinger first.