Sucking bugs

[fltcoils]

Anyone find a good way to clean up wasp nests (or yellow jackets) using a vacuum cleaner?

Not really a joke.

When I turn on my workbench flourescents in the basement, I get 2 to 10 yellow jackets swarming the light fixture. Happens elsewhere in the basement too.

creepy.

As an interim I've been sucking them up with my electrolux canister, but I can imagine some bad ways that this could end up.

ideas?

 

[fltcoils]

oops, its a eureaka, not electrolux

yeah, I've seen the other name so often here I wrote the wrong name.

the bugs have begun to fly upstairs, my wife and 4 year old are starting to get busy swatting them. aaaak!

Nerve agent poisen is a less attractive option, because of the youthful family member. I just wish I knew where they were getting in.

The comedy of this is they aren't attracted to incandescent light so much. I first took out the flourescents and hauled them outdoors imagining they had a nest in them. Then with the incandescents looked at the ceiling for a nest. None. But there on the floor under my tool chest cart a yellow jacket was Walking, not flying. Geesh. And then another.

Then I pluggedin some other fluorescents across the basement...within a minute 4 or 6 flying around the fixture...

So the 6000 and 3000 kelvin bulbs attracting the bugs

But no sign of a nest, plus I'm shy about poking around for a wasp nest in the house.

thus the defense by vacuum. as a backup plan

 

[gyrafoam]

They like to nest in the ground. Do you have a partially finnished basement where they can get in through the dirt? Maybe there is a shallow part to the foundation?
They also have a pretty painful sting. I'd rather get stung by a wasp or hornet than a damned yellow jacket, and if you swat at them they just come right at you. I'd go for some RAID!

 

[panthera]

If you

have that many wasps 'wandering' around, you have a nest. At least one.
If you can afford it, a licensed exterminator can offer less dangerous solutions, some using poisons which break down in hours, not centuries.
Probably you have a hole somewhere in the house itself (window framing, door framing, sill plate to foundation, HVAC opening taken out of service?) I'd do a thorough search.
There are pheromone based traps which work and are non-toxic. Unfortunately, they also attract the damn things into areas where you didn't have them before...

 

[sudsmaster]

I agree. There must be a nest somewhere in the structure.

I had a yellow jacket problem in my enclosed patio. Turns out there was a 1" gap in the facing on the outside of the shed roof over the patio. They got in there and built a nest in between the 2x6 rafters. Sealing up the gap just resulted in the yellow jackets crawling out of other cracks directly into the patio. I finally solved the problem by drilling 1/8" holes into the ceiling of the patio, bending a plastic spray tube 90 degrees, sticking into the nozzle of a can of wasp insecticide, pushing the tube up into the cavity between the ceiling and roofing material, and letting it rip. I could hear angry buzzing and a few debilitated wasps made it out through other cracks, but it all soon died down. Eventually I'm going to have to open up the ceiling to clean out the dead wasps and nest material... but it's not high on my list of things to do around the house...

So... I'm thinking your wasps could be nesting in any gap in the building material in your home. Could be in the ground, in the wall, in the gap between the ceiling of the basement and the floor above, etc...

 

[fltcoils]

A nest for sure, perhaps in the old dryer duct and hose

I'd seen a friend suck up swarming yellow jackets around his back porch, with a hoover upright, bag type. I thought it a bit ill advised at the time, but it worked well for him.

so I thought as a defense the vacuum would be better than swatting. And it was, those guys would buzz around but the vortex at the nozzle end, but it got them if they got within 2 inches or so. very effective.

I found no buzzing or crawling when I took the machine, a canister, outside and removed the paper bag from it. I did spray in seven but that's slow working and there was lint etc plenty in there. so the vacuum ride must have shaken them up a lot.

What I imagined was making a vacuum bag from screen, attaching to the cardboard for a normal bag, and setting that in the vacuum. then...find the nest, position the vacuum by the entrance, and engage. After 10 minutes cover the hose and take outside. Then seven the screen bag thing or dump in a bucket. With the crew gone from the next I could then carry it away.

eh?

 

[panthera]

I would

not want to spray anything into a running vacuum cleaner...those motors have brushes, those brushes make sparks...

 

[fltcoils]

I unplug it downstairs, then go outside and open it.

The "clean out" occurs outdoors with it off.

I just thought a screen bag would be easy to make with the "fred ziffle" staple system of sewing. Resuable.

That way I don't waste bags, hard to find B bags for my eureka in shops around here. (it think it's B)

thanks for all the good input.

 

[rp2813]

Since they like flourescent lights, have you tried using a bug zapper for those that prefer to explore inside the house instead of outside? Maybe that would be too noisy and smoky. The nest has got to have access to the outdoors as well as indoors so once you locate it you may try attacking it from outside, but not until you're sure they can't all flee in the indoor direction. If you think it's the old dryer duct, have you checked from outside to see if there's anybody coming and going out of it? I'd say wait for winter cold to kill them off but it seems they've found a spot where they'll be able to stay warm. I just hooked up a new dryer and had a choice of the active vent or a decommissioned one. The old one had been blocked off by a tuna can, which fit perfectly in the duct. Maybe if you block it off that way, they won't be able to get inside anymore.

Meanwhile, the vacuum method seems like a good one to me. I find it very satisfying to suck up any insect I don't want in my house but that I don't want to annoy either.

 

[sudsmaster]

I think we had a thread here fairly recently, discussing how the simple act of vacuuming kills fleas. It is thought to disrupt their exoskeletons enough to kill them. Probably the wasps are just as vulnerable, if not more so.

Yes, I would look all around the house outside, look for wasps flying and landing on the house. Then look to where they crawl - it's probably to the entrance to their nest. Then try to find where they might be getting from the nest indoors, and plug that up first. You can try to spray some wasp killer into the nest entrance, but if it's like my incident, it might not be a direct show and you'll have to get creative like I did: drilling holes and using a small tube to shoot the insecticide directly into the nest in the wall or ceiling cavity.

As I recall, yellow jackets can overwinter in burrows. The queens certainly do, and even if the rest of the hive dies off in the cold, the queens repopulate the nest in short order each spring. This is why it is helpful to set out the yellow jacket traps as soon as winter ends - to catch the queens before they repopulate the nest again.