We had a pile of garden debris in which they have built a nest. My husband, not knowing this, removed part of the pile with his frontloader. That’s when we discovered the nest. For the last 36 hr. about a doz.wasps are flying around the remaining pile. I can see no entrance or exit sites & apparently neither can the wasps. They appear confused & have not settled down. We have used your products before (carpenter ants, carpenter bees & yellowjackets) & think you are the BEST! Should we go with the immersion treatment even though we cant seem to find the entrance exit? Please help as my husband is allergic to stings!
There are several things that might have happened here. It’s possible the main part of the nest was in the part of the pile your husband removed. However, if that’s the case, where he moved it should be swarming with the yellowjackets so if this happened, it should be easy to tell. It could be the nest “trails” were disrupted by the work which in turn would cause them to flurry and hover around the area seemingly lost but in most cases when this happens they’ll be able to re establish trails within a week. Lastly, it could be the nest is down in the ground, under the debris, and that for the time being, it’s entrance and exit holes are covered. Again, in a matter of a few days they’ll re establish a trail unless the area is treated. Unfortunately there is no sure fire way to handle this kind of nest because there are too many unknowns. That being said, here are some suggestions.
Dousing the debris with the CYPERMETHRIN listed in our YELLOW JACKET CONTROL ARTICLE could be the easiest way to resolve the problem. You could spray them from a good distance away spraying the area heavy with 1/2-1 gallon of mixed product. A HOSE END SPRAYER would let you do this using your garden hose. Doing this over a 2-4 day period treating every day should get them. The reason you’d need to do repeat treatments is because the debris would no doubt absorb a lot of the treatment which in turn would take away it’s ability to knock everything out in one fall swoop. I’ve handled problems like this in mulch piles and in most every case 2-4 treatments are required to knock them out for good.
A quicker and more efficient treatment would be to dust the area with DRIONE. Even without knowing exactly where the nest is this would get them all. The only problem is obvious; how you do you get close enough to treat the area without getting stung? To do the treatment safely, you’ll no doubt need to wear a BEE SUIT, GLOVES AND VEIL to insure no one gets injured.
One other method I’m sure would work would be the use of PHANTOM AEROSOL. Spraying this slow working active over the area from close range should penetrate all their landing areas which would assure they’d be touching treated surfaces. The label for Phantom only says Paper Wasps but we know it will work on yellowjackets too. Again, wearing Bee Safety equipment would be in order to avoid getting stung. But the aerosol would penetrate like the dust and in doing so get them good without you having to know exactly where the nest is located. Phantom is not a knockdown type active like the Cypermethrin but instead it takes 2-4 days to kick in. By taking a long time and being an active the insects don’t mind or even notice, they’ll continue about their business and come in contact with treated surfaces. Next they’ll move into their nests not realizing they’re spreading it amongst the entire populous. In the end, the nest will die and I would expect a good 30-60 treatment into the nest would do the job.
Here are direct links to the information and products listed above:
Cypermethrin: http://www.bugspraycart.com/insecticide/liquid/viper-cypermethrin
Yellowjacket Control: http://www.bugspray.com/article/yellowjackets.html
Hose End Sprayer: http://www.bugspraycart.com/equipment/sprayers/gilmour-6g-385
Drione: http://www.bugspraycart.com/insecticide/dust/drione-dust
Bee Suit:
Phantom Aerosol: http://www.bugspraycart.com/insecticide/aerosol/pt-phantom-17-5oz
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