Every summer/fall. But they try to nest inside the siding of my old house, they can find every hole or crack. In fact, I've been fighting some for a week now right off the back porch - spraying a foam insecticide over the hole, but it's taking awhile for them to get the message to leave.

On my flowers? Not so much, my yellow jackets are meat eaters! They bring in prey, like insects or high-carb food bits from the neighbor's picnic. I always apologize when I kill one, they're just doing what comes natural after all; but they can be dangerous that's for sure.

Have you tried Raid's Wasp and Hornet Spray? It's great! Not only does it shoot a long ways, it has an oil in it along with poison, so if you sprayed the hole while the wasp was away, it won't come back because of the poison/oil residue left behind.

It also works great on spiders that are nesting on the porch roof or something. I killed a lot that got into the siding of the roof yesterday. They'd craw out and drop like flies.

When I have a nest in an area that leads to personal risk (under my raised bed) I use an insecticide for crawling insects and spray it where the wasps land before entering or as they leave the nest. Wasps entering the nest carry the insecticide in and when they die the wasp that carries the corpse out dies as well. The activity ends in two or three days.

If there isn't a landing area, I place a block of wood or something in front of the entrance to force them to land.

Paper wasps here, not many yellow jackets. We leave them alone for the most part as they aren't aggressive but, we're having a new roof put on today so DH went up and took care of the nests around the roof a couple of days ago for the roofers benefit. This is a new thing for us, never saw paper wasp nests around here until a couple of years ago, now they're everywhere you look. I actually saw two honey bees yesterday, things are looking up.

Annette

Yes, but they aren't aggressive until right before frost. I've heard they get kicked out of their nest then, but I don't know if that's true...I'd probably be irritable too. LOL

Between the barns, sheds, old farmhouse, etc. there's no way we could get rid of them all, so I try to encourage them to be anywhere other than right by the front or back doors. They love butterfly bushes and shallow birdbaths, so I put both in several places away from the doors. They like to sit on the veggies and many of the flowers, when the weather gets hot, so it's best to weed when it gets shady (better for us, too, right?) If you can't beat them...get them a butterfly bush :)

Our yellow jackets have paper nest also. I know some wasps live in the ground by themselves, not sure which.

We have every type of wasp in the flowerbed! They're not agressive but boy am I afraid of them. They zigzag across the sidewalk when I'm walking on it.

Raid is good, I tried the foaming kind because it sounded like a great idea. Wait until dusk, spray foam in and around the hole and trap them inside. Well, the foam disintegrated after 10min. or so! I used up the can on them, so I think I'll go buy the Raid. Also, get the caulking gun and plug that hole up.

That one side of my house has so much caulking already,and I can only go so high up the ladder; so some of it doesn't look very nice - more of a dob and smear job with a long pole.

Dad always poured gas down the entrance holes of the yellow jackets or wasps nesting in the ground.

I have lots of wasps hovering over the pond and I don't use insecticides especially over the pond. So instead I bought one of those wasp traps and put in rotting fruits and vegetables. it seems to be working and has caught a number of insects

Some have claimed that by putting a fake wasp's nest near the area is enough to drive away the insects. Give it a try using a paper bag fashioned to look like a nest.

Oh boy, yellow jackets. They LOVED our old house. One year, we had shut off a small bedroom upstairs to conserve on cooling costs. We opened the door and it was FULL of hundreds of yellow jackets. I ran screaming.

There were nests aplenty on the outside of the house, there must have been a big nest inside the house in the attic to get to that room, and there had to have been one around the giant plum tree that they congregate around.

I declared total war, got about 10 cans of the wasp killer that sprays like 25 feet and soaked every nest I could say, and soaked the plum tree. It worked pretty well. I had to be on the watchout because they would always like to come back, though. I actually stepped on one in our laundry room and that was not too pleasant.

They are extremely aggressive.

I don't feel guilty at all. Yellow jackets are actually an invasive species from Europe so I kill those buggers ASAP. At the old house we never saw honeybees, but we did have carpenter bees and bumble bees. I left the carpenter bees because they seemed to deter the yellow jackets from our porch.

It got so bad we almost had to call a professional exterminator.

I make fake wasp nests out of plastic bags stuffed inside a t-shirt bag, then spray painted them a light grey. This seems to work for us.

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Annette

I hear ya' krycek. If you would go up into the crawlspace above my kitchen (actually where the ceiling was dropped and an attic of sorts was created), you'll see a big ole' nest plastered at the top of one of the original tall school windows that is boarded over. It's a dead nest now, but it was like something from a horror movie when I first saw it.

I've had exterminators out many times over the years, one time though a fellow asked if he could trap them instead of kill them. He sold certain types of yellow jackets for research. I said, "Sure". He put a funnel trap up at dusk and came back the next day to collect them. They had to be a special type of yellow jacket, I forget the name.

Schoolhouse:

Yes, they are particularly bad in old homes because of all the various add ons, mini-attics, crawlspaces, etc. Our house is from the mid 1800's and several add-on's so there are a multitude of areas for yellow jackets to enjoy their summer life.

I asked you in the gallery but I don't think you saw - my Grandma lived in Coshocton and a couple of your pictures looked like you are maybe around that area, too. It's very beautiful there. She's gone now but I still go down there.

Oh, I'm in Wayne County.

Luckily no yellow jackets here. None of the wasps
in my garden are agressive. Sometimes I find little
nest made from dried mud. They love the flowers,
especially the fennel and orange butterfly weed.

Yes! I got stung by one last night! Or maybe it was a bumblebee... I don't know. I was running too fast and screaming too much to be sure.

LOL, scully! Wasps have been my phobia for years, and I finally got stung by one the first time in my life a couple of months ago. I ran inside the house. literally threw things on the floor from the medicine cabinet just so I could find the Benadryl, then took two of them. The SOB got me on my ear!

I don't know if I'd use caulk or plug them up with foam, because that way they may find another exit that could go to the walls!

Raid is excellent. It's the one in the black can, don't get the regular bug or wasp spray, this one says for Hornets and Wasp and it goes a long way in distance.

haha... yes, moments of panic always follow a bee sting.

My neighbors, who witnessed the screaming from their window, already think I'm crazy.

a. They NEVER step foot outside. Ever. I pretty much live outside.

b. I foster kittens for an animal shelter, so every few weeks they see different kittens in my window (along with my own 3 cats) and probably have concluded I am a hoarder.
c. I screamed and jumped and ran when I got stung by the bee, hurried inside like a madwoman, applied wet baking soda, then calmly appeared two minutes later to finish my trimming.

I doubt they'll even open their windows now. :-P

We have Mud Daubbers, which look like wasps but with a waist that is so thin it look like they're held together on a thread. They're either solid blue/black or black with yellow feet. They're basically harmless, they get inside sometimes and I just catch them in a rolled up paper funnel (pinch the big end shut after the bug is inside) and release them outside. They mainly eat spiders.

We also have the red wasps with the blue/black wings that make the open faced paper nest. I've found the nests where they can see *you* coming are less trouble than the ones that are squirreled away in some hole in the wall. The red wasps that stake a claim to the space under the eaves behind the siding are notoriously aggressive and we usually end up having to destroy their nest every year. But so far, I've avoided any trouble with them by not hanging out in the area in the early evening when they're getting ready to retire. The Red Wasps that make a nest every year in the empty clear sided birdfeeder in the pecan tree have never bothered anyone. (I don't feed the birds between March 17th and Thanksgiving, so the space is "for rent" during the summer) I never destroy Red Wasp nests unless the colony is becoming aggressive because they kill pests like Tomato Hornworm.

The only yellow jackets (black/brownish and yellow striped body) we have seen here make their nest in the ground where you have no idea that they're there and can't tell how big the colony is. I consider them extremely dangerous. A person or animal innocently walking past will "call them up" by the vibration on the ground and there can be dozens, if not hundreds of them attack at once. When we first bought this place, we had one yellow jacket nest here down by the pond; I marked it, and returned that night to douse the ground with gasoline and burn them out.

They're probably not a different species, but to me, Hornets make the big, fancy round paper nests, and I can't remember seeing any of them in Oklahoma at all in the 30 plus years I've been here.

Scully, I got stung last night too!! I was finally going to spend a few solid hours in the garden yesterday evening after work. I was out there for about 5 minutes when a wasp stung me on my hand. He was stinging a long time before I realized it and got me good. They were coming out of a spirea which I thought odd. We usually have paper wasps here and I've never seen them "living" in shrubs.

Yellowjackets are just downright nasty. I've actually had them chase me across the yard. Then I get them back and soak their hole with wasp/hornet spray.

Haven't seen a single honey bee this year. Bummer....

Thyme, I haven't seen any honeybees either. And, mine stung for a long time too! Now everytime I feel the slightest poke from a twig or something I think I'm being attacked. Post-traumatic stress syndrome. haha.

LOL!! Scully, the next evening I went out and did weed and deadhead the slope. Every time I bent down and got poked in the butt by my barberry or some other prickly plant I was sure I was being stung again! So funny that I also had some post-traumatic stress!!

I'm seeing lots of honey bees for the first time in about 4 years, my porcelain vine is covered in them on sunny days, things are starting to look up around here.

All of our yellow jackets have nests on branches of big trees or inside thick bushes and the ivy going up to the house.

When I was a kid my dad found a hornet's nest somewhere and it was as big as a football. He brought it home (empty,lol) and my brother always kept it in his room. That was the coolest thing ever!

But I don't even know what a hornet looks like. We have every type of stinging wasps in my garden, so I'm sure they're somewhere, espcially being in the country.

I have the same experience as littledog. Yellow jackets normally build their nests underground and they are extremely agressive-ask me how I know! Anyway, there was a show on the radio yesterday talking about how to get rid of them. Apparently, the underground nests are built with tunnels that divert pesticides away from the actual nest. The person on the radio said to go out at night, set up your shop vac with the hose right next to the hole with a long extension cord so you don't need to go near it in the morning and also set up a bug zapper there. In the morning, switch on the shop vac. The noise will bring the yellow jackets out and they will be sucked up in the hose or else they will end up zapping themselves. Apparently, they are so aggressive they will continue attacking and basically killing themselves until the nest is empty (that could be a number in the thousands he said). Sounds like a lot of work to me. Still, a lot of guys might like setting up a contraption like that! LOL.

And then there are the hornets. This is a nest that was in an old arborvitae at my parents' cabin one year - 20 or so years ago. Dad killed the hornets long before he removed the nest and laid it on the mantel above the fireplace. When he died in 1994 and Mom was cleaning up and pitching things, I said "dibs" on the hornet nest and placed it on top of my instrument cabinet.

One year I was mowing with the push mower around the outhouse and suddenly felt a sharp pain in my cheek. I looked up to see a hornet nest hanging under the eaves and the hornets chased me into the house, stinging me several times in the face. I got in and slammed the door, but those hornets milled about the door for awhile yet. They are black with a white spot on their head - thus called "bald-faced hornets". Eventually I got brave enough to knock down the nest and guess I sprayed or smashed it I can't remember. Thank goodness it wasn't as big as this one, but same shape.

I heard one time that a little boy was taking a hornet nest to school for show and tell, and while on the bus the nest got warm and the hornets began coming out! Don't know if that is true or not, but yikes.
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Wow! That is one huge nest!

I didn't know we had bald-faced hornets in Ohio!!!!!