Yellow Jacket's Nest Unveiled

I hit a nest of those lil' bastards with my lawn mower once... ill never forget it only 3 of them got to me... but holy crap the race was ON! Glad to hear your getting through it bro

I think if you pee on your hand it will relieve the pain and get the poison of the sting outta there. Let us know how it works for ya!! wait a minute...that may be for jellyfish stings......but try it anyway....

Speaking about bread jobs.....
I got to work in GrandPa Stroehmann's bread factory in Norristown, PA for a summer while in school. The pay was great for that time...$13 / hr. But they gave the summer hires the crappiest jobs in addition to filling in for vacationing full time workers. The worst one, we had to clean out the chain drive tracks in the ovens which even though they were 'off' for 3 days were still at 120*. We wore teflon jumpsuits with hoodies and real advanced dust masks. We were only allowed in there for 10 minutes at a time because they were afraid we would pass out and the only access was a small hole in the side of the oven that we would crawl through... I lost 7 lbs that night, my workboots were soaked like I had been standing in buckets of water all night. One of the other jobs was to rappel down the inside of the flour silo while scraping off the crud. It was fun, but I can't believe we were allowed to do it from a safety standpoint. Some old guy named Frank gave us about 15 minutes of training for that job before sending us to the top of the 80' silo.

dcrane wrote:I hit a nest of those lil' bastards with my lawn mower once... ill never forget it only 3 of them got to me... but holy crap the race was ON! Glad to hear your getting through it bro

Thanks partner. It's progressively getting better as time moves forward good thing too! I play bass in a rock band, and this weekend we have a big event to play for. Had the gig been yesterday I woulda been totally screwed!!

Lightning I can completely relate. Loading a brush pile into my pick up and sure enough found a yellow jacket nest. Got stung twice. Little bastards. Taking it easy for a little while. I'm funny. Sometimes I have to be rushed to the hospital other times no reaction at all. Epee pen, Ibuprofen, and Benadryl. Hope your hands are better. Matt

At least they weren't white faced hornets - would've got chase relentlessly, and the pain would've been x10 at least!

Just hosed down a nest of those bastards out int he yard here a couple weeks back. Was getting big. Entrance was about 2" from my left shoulder as I rode the mower past ...

Thanks Matt. Hand is all better now. Took 3 days for the swelling to come down completely. Last year a fellow coworker got stung on the back of his neck. Shortly after his kids found him in a heap on the bathroom floor, unconscious!!! They called 911 and had him rushed to the hospital. He spent the night there. It was very scary for a while!!!

Well, I found another nest.. or should I say they found me. This time under my pool deck. Stung my index finger on the same hand.

Getting stung by Yellow Jackets was a common thing when I was a child back home. We were 20 miles away from the nearest doctor down a dirt road. Getting swarmed by them could be a death sentence. The point of that is, you have to do something to alleviate the pain and swelling as soon as possible.
This might sound crazy, but; it works well. As soon as you get stung, put gasoline on the stings. Do it right away. It will greatly lessen the pain and swelling.
I don't know how or why it works. It just does. If you wait then it won't do any good. You have to get the gas on the stings right away.

Anyhow, your hand looks pretty bad. If you start having trouble breathing, get dizzy or your heart begins to race. Don't wait go the doctor immediately.
Now the best thing to do at this stage is to ice down your hands while someone goes to the nearest drug store and gets some Benadryl in the PILL form. You need to get an antihistamine in your system to counter the swelling and soon to follow itching. Antihistamine ointments are okay, but; the venom is in your blood stream now and so an ointment isn't that effective.

If you don't experience any other complications, you'll be alright by tomorrow if you take the antihistamine tonight.

Thanks for the great advice William. It happened around noon today and I was so pissed off my first order of business was to annihilate the softball size nest I found under the pool deck. So, unfortunately some time passed between the sting and some first aid.

Wow gasoline.. never heard of that but I'll try anything to avoid this discomfort next time. I did take some antihistamine earlier but didn't have any in pill form.

Sting on one side and both hands swollen????? Bilateral involvement, hmmm, secondary sensitization? Time for a doctors visit.

No no .. just my left is swollen. My right hand is in the pic for comparison. Its only effected my right hand although my whole forearm feels warmer than the other one.

Gas must kill the venom - that venom is what causes all the pain/swelling. Great idea!

Yellow jackets suck ... but hornets (some call them wasps ... no idea wtf they really are - just know they hurt like hell!) are the worst. Burns like friggin fire all the way in and doesn't stop! Hate those SOB's. Just killed 3 nests in the 2 Volvos - both right in the door jambs behind the front fenders. Only a single, or 3 at the most on each nest unlike yellow jackets.

Ahh I was right - it is a hornet: http://www.bee-busters.com/index.php?link=brown_hornet

A little paper nesting bee tid bit...new nest builders will search out, find and tear fibers from unoccupied nests to enlarge their ever-expanding new nests.

Whenever I need to exterminate an occupied paper nest I do so after sunset by injecting a blast of Sevin 5% garden dust.

I made up a ~16 oz. squeeze bottle w/ a spout to which I have attached a ~18" piece of 3/8" plastic tubeing . The plan is to quickly insert/puncture the loose end of the tube into the upper 1/3 of the nest while inverting the squeeze bottle laced w/ Sevin dust and then giving the bottle a good squeeze to deliver the big dose. Then...it's RUN,FOREST...RUN!

If it so happens that one is able to tolerate leaving this now uninhabited paper nest in place one will not only have taken out that one nest this season but also countless other nests, as even into next spring/season when new bee nesters do start to search out and find and haul away fibers of this old unoccupied nest they will be hauling residual Sevin dust to their new nest sites...and no running will be required on ones part.

Sevin 5% garden dust use requires adherence to labeled/stated instructions and cautions.

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME
I am a trained professional.