We love to eat on the patio but at this time of year Yellow Jackets can make the meal pretty miserable.

A couple of years back I heard that they don't like the smell of fresh cloves. We were having problems with them being attracted to hummingbird feeders and even facing off with the birds. I put some whole cloves around the feed bottle where it attached to the base of the feeder. Yellow Jackets would approach the feeder and then fly away. Shortly, they stopped approaching the feeder altogether.

Taking that idea a step further we bought some clove incense sticks. For the past week we have lit a stick on the patio table shortly before taking food out. We have had salmon and chicken on the patio and have not been bothered by Yellow Jackets. This is the time of year when they are at their worst and it has been hot and dry here.

I can't say it is foolproof, but it seems to be working.

 

I've had a ton of wasps this year, but very few yellow jackets for some reason. Probably the least I've seen in a decade, don't know where they all went. Conversely, seen a lot more hornets than normal though. Even had a small nest they started on at the back of the house before I even noticed it.

 

I hate those little ****ers

Been stung more times than I care to remember

Back of the neck as I walked out a door was the worst

 

Thanks for the tip Tom...doesn't sound right and you probably deserved all those bee stings 2K lol

 

Very interesting. This morning we did NOT light an incense stick before having breakfast on the patio. My homemade pork breakfast sausage attracted THREE Yellow Jackets. We each killed one with a napkin swat then lit a stick. The third on left and never came back. At one point we had an overflight but he kept right on going. The stuff really appears to work.

 

Our clove incense sticks are by HEM. They came in a carton of six packages of 20 sticks each and we bought them on-line. We have also purchased a carton of their lavender incense sticks. It will be interesting to see if they have any effect on the dreaded YJs. In other words, does the fragrance of the incense simply mask the aroma of the food or does the clove fragrance actually repel them. I'll report back.

 

My dog eats yellow jackets. She catches them in mid air, clatters her teeth like a machine gun, spits them out to make sure they're dead, and once they are she'll eat them. She REALLY likes them too, she'll chase any that show up in our yard trying to kill them.


Crazy German Shepherd.

 

They have these where I am currently working:


Just hang a few yellow jacket traps and picnic to your hearts delight!

 

We used to hang up traps with an attractant. We found that when we cooked fresh shrimp the shells we removed before cooking worked better than the provided attractant. Nevertheless, the traps were only a partial solution and we were still bothered by YJs when eating on the patio. The clove incense sticks seem to have ended that problem without having to mess with traps.

Incidentally, we put out a lavender incense stick today before taking our lunch out on the patio. I had one YJ fly up and hang around until I waved a napkin at him. He didn't return, but my suspicion is that lavender incense will not do the job. So cloves it is for me.

 

A few years back I was vacuuming out my truck with my big shop vac when I was stung in the back by a yellow jacket. I quickly turned to see a nest in the ground on a hill that runs along side my driveway. I waited until dusk when they were back in the nest then stuck the thin long shop vac attachment in the hole and hit the switch! When finished I put a plastic bag over the shop vac so they could not escape. A few days later I removed the top of the vac to find about 100+ dead yellow jackets!

 

If I see where they're going, I usually just dump a can of gas in their hole.

 

Ya gotta nuke'em. Just to be sure.

 

I just finished redoing my deck (stripped it down to the frame then reinforced the structure and redid the whole thing in composite). I was getting bombarded by wasps every time I worked. Killing 9-10 each time with a badminton racket then stomping them. Read online you can take a brown paper bag and stuff it with newspaper, then crunch it in your hands to give the outside a textured look and hang it near where you have the wasps. They think it is a nest of an already existing colony and leave that area alone since they are non-confrontational within their own species supposedly. I left a few homemade "nests" hanging on the deck as I worked and it seemed to work. Not sure if the same would work for yellow jackets though?!?