It's Yellow Jacket Season

I ran into my first yellow jacket nest in a while yesterday. Back when I first started doing yard work it seemed I ran into one nest a year for the first five years or so. I'd usually have no warning. I'd be working and all of the sudden start getting stung. After taking off running I'd come back and only then see the nest.

Sometimes you can't really see the nests as the wasps often nest underground. As far as I'm concerned their nests are one of the most hideous things around. Like something out of a horror movie. Ick!

The one I ran into yesterday was in a hedge I was working on near Eureka High School. Just by chance I'd decided to use the hedge trimmer extension on my Stihl brushcutter. That allowed me to stand back a ways from the area being cut.

If I'd been using my regular hedge trimmer, I would have been standing with my face almost right at the nest when the wasps came swarming out of it. As it was, I saw them swarm from a distance and was able to move away before they came after me. Saved by a random choice.

Probably my worst experience was 10 or so years ago. I was standing on a bed of ivy in Myrtletown while trimming it. I was under a tree and felt something over my left eye. Saw something there, too, but thought it was just a branch. Nope. Once that wasp over my left eye stung me I knew what was happening. I ran to the sidewalk real quick and there were yellow jackets all over my pants.

I got stung a few times in the face and arms. I'd dropped my string trimmer on the ivy over the nest and had to drag it away with a rake. What really got me was the owner came home just as I was getting my string trimmer back. I told her about the nest and she didn't even ask if I was ok. That kinda irked me. As if she thought it was my job to get attacked by a horde of yellow jackets.

At that place yesterday, the first thing the gal that owned the house asked was if I was ok. How nice!

I've heard that yellow jackets won't bite or sting if you leave them alone and don't make fast movements or loud noises. I'm not so sure about that. Some years ago I was laying on a towel out in my back yard sunbathing and a yellow jacket came up and stung me on the foot for no reason whatsoever. I was just laying there. It turned out their nest was ten or so feet away, in the ground with ivy covering it. You can be sure I showed that nest no mercy.

The first time I recall running into yellow jackets was up on Lord Ellis Summit just after I'd moved up here in the mid- 70s. We'd gone to visit someone that lived in a dome up there. We went walking down a trail and came to a viewpoint of sorts where you could get a real good look of Redwood Valley(?). My dog was on the edge of the drop off and all of the sudden she yelped and took off running back down the trail. That's when we noticed yellow jackets all over our pants. She'd been standing on a nest.

We took off running down the trail. I didn't get stung. I'm not sure if the person I was with did, but Nika, my dog, had them all over her. She'd found an abandoned car and curled up inside to hide. I coaxed her out and found yellow jackets had went through her heavy fur and were in bunches all over her skin still stinging her. I took a couple small branches and smashed the yellow jackets between them. We went back to the dome and Nika seemed none the worse but she must have been hurting.

Getting rid of the nests isn't too hard if they're out in the open. There are Wasp and Hornet sprays available at any number of stores. Spraying the nests at night when the wasps are sleeping is fairly easy and safe, assuming the nest is out in the open. I killed the wasps nesting in the ivy in my back yard by spraying the entrance repeatedly.

I've heard of people also just going out at night and smashing the nests which seems to work. I've seen a few smashed nests I assumed got that treatment. Saw a huge nest way up in a tree on Humboldt Hill years ago. Came by the place weeks later and it was in pieces on the ground. I was guessing as far up the tree as it was someone must have taken a shotgun and blasted it. Good idea.

The best way is to have the bees captured and used for medicine. I've read about this guy every now and then in the local papers. I guess he comes up here in June, assuming he has enough requests for wasp removal to make it worth his while. He captures them, stores them in dry ice and sells them to a lab that extracts their stinger poison to use in anti- toxins.

That's what we're going to try to do with the nest I ran into yesterday, if we can find the guy's phone number.