No Poison Shop-Vac Yellow Jacket Trap!

Wanting to avoid poisons and knowing that sprays only work on contact, we rigged up two Shop-Vacs the do-it-yourself route and made our very own "No Poison Shop-Vac Yellow Jacket Trap." We set these up in the front yard and let 'em rip. The wasps swarmed it at first then settled down. We found letting them run awhile and then turning them off at intervals worked well. I don't know how many are in the nest, but I have to think it at least made some impact. At night, we can hear them crawling and biting and chewing up in the ceiling, so we are hoping to remove as many as possible.

Directions:

1) Fill Shop-Vac halfway with water.
2) Add dish detergent (you don't need much).
3) Position beside the entry/exit hole to the nest.
4) Let 'er rip!

These are thumbnails so click each one for a much larger picture.

—a little scary during the setup phase, yes, but once in place, requires little maintenance, no dangerous chemicals, and needs only a little bit of that tinkering spirit so many on CPF have in abundance!

This is awesome, thanks for the post!

I've used this method half a dozen times with great success. The only differences being, I don't put water in the vacuum No need; when they're traveling that fast then experience the sudden stop.... They die. The other difference is I leave more space between the opening and the intake hose. This gives the ones outside an opportunity to fly into the suction.

:wave: Bu-bye bees.

~ Chance

Are you sure those are not Honey Bees and they have a hive in there???


EDIT / Never mind, I zoomed in on those pictures and they sure do look like Yellow Jackets.....

AFAIK, honey bees do not chew on wood.

I am 100% certain they are yellow jackets and not honey bees.

Here are some quick pics illustrating the differences:

HAHAHAHA!!!! This is great!! Wow, I almost want a bee infestation to take place now

markr6 said:

HAHAHAHA!!!! This is great!! Wow, I almost want a bee infestation to take place now

Click to expand...

You could use this as well;

http://bugasalt.com/

—that's pretty funny!

Dumped both canisters out earlier this afternoon and refilled with water and liquid dish detergent.

I read somewhere that if you dispose of enough of them, there is an insufficient supply of workers to feed the larvae.

I'm going outside now to see if there are any new captures...yup, another 20 to 25 in there since we emptied it.

Hopefully any workers returning in the late afternoon get sucked in as well as any other wasps getting a late start!

lol, shop vac blackhole of doom!

Yellow Jackets in the house, really nice! I have only seen them build in a ground nest. I didn't think they would do a wall or attic. Learn something everyday here on CPF!

I had a beehive that got built in one of my outer walls. That was hard to get rid of. Took a few weeks. I did the vac trick (no water) and I used simple green in a pump sprayer. Simple green knocks them right out of the air. Plus my wall was cleaned.

I also hung a bug zapper to snag the loose ones. It sounded like I was using a Tazer on a unruly crowd of criminals! Plus, it smelled like a bee bbq every evening for a few days. I was surprised that they weren't more attracted to the bug zapper. It got a bunch, but not as many as I expected.

I thought about trying to find a used bug zapper but I don't think I've ever read anything about wasps being particularly attracted to light.

I can hear them chewing/crunching/mashing away right now in the ceiling.

Yuck!

The goal is to be rid of them before we find uninvited guests in the house!

Chauncey Gardiner said:

I've used this method half a dozen times with great success. The only differences being, I don't put water in the vacuum No need; when they're traveling that fast then experience the sudden stop.... They die. The other difference is I leave more space between the opening and the intake hose. This gives the ones outside an opportunity to fly into the suction.

:wave: Bu-bye bees.

~ Chance

Click to expand...

Yeah but the water makes the soup easier to prep.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww......

ForrestChump said:

Yeah but the water makes the soup easier to prep.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww......

Click to expand...

I think you're confused, it's Pea soup, not Bee soup.

~ Chance







This is now a ForrestChump thread. :thumbsup:

LEDAdd1ct said:

I thought about trying to find a used bug zapper but I don't think I've ever read anything about wasps being particularly attracted to light.

I can hear them chewing/crunching/mashing away right now in the ceiling.

Yuck!

The goal is to be rid of them before we find uninvited guests in the house!

Click to expand...

Are you able to access the area where the nest is located? If so, have you had a L@@K at it from inside of the attic/crawl space?

~ Chance

I found out I had a problem when my daughter told me there were bees in her ceiling fan. She was 8. So naturally I thought she was embellishing. She had about a dozen in her room. Which lead up to about 100 or so flying around inside the house through out the whole removal project. Once I sealed the outside, those stuck in the walls started coming in the house! It was so stupid, it actually got funny.
Visitors to the house would say: "Dude you got a bee in your house" and stuff like that. We got so used to them that it didn't bug us. Funny thing is my daughter was super scared of bees before this began. Now she thinks they are cute and friendly.

Boy was I wrong! I would say there were probably 1500 to 2000 bees. I am not embellishing! It was insanity. Took me several weeks to rid my walls of them. Then the honey started to rot! It was summer and that stunk for 2 weeks! Before I started murdering them, I called all the bee people I could find. Nobody was interested in helping remove the hive. I felt bad killing them, but they were destroying my house. They can drill small holes too. And they can find every tiny crack. When you seal the Queen in, they freak out to get to her. They would make huge bee balls where they thought they could get in. I would suck them up.
Beeleave it or not, I never got bit. :sweat:

Don't get me started on the time I had termites I had to fight too! Those attacked the back of my house! I had to fully abate a few walls to get rid of them. Yes I had the house treated. They are sneaky little beasts. Bathroom tube drain was the location of the assault. You could put a cup up to the wall and hear them munching my house away!

I wonder if honey bee fume boards work well for yellow jackets. Because if so, you could "Shepard" to this direction willingly.

1) If you look in the photos you can see the closest access we can get, i.e., just above where the brick ends.

2) All we have access to is the little hole outside the house.

3) After emptying the canisters around noon, we caught much fewer today, maybe 20 to 25.

4) I am hoping the bulk of them are gone, but tomorrow morning we'll get both vacuum cleaners fired up again!