Found the yellowjacket nest 20 meters from my hives — take it out now, and how, or is it not worth it this late?
Central Texas, twelve colonies. The yellowjackets have been hammering my two weakest hives for three weeks — robbing screens are on and holding — and yesterday I finally followed the traffic to a ground nest under a brush pile about 20 meters from the stand. Southern yellowjackets from the look of them, one main hole and what might be a second exit a foot away. The traffic is constant.
Here's my question. Up north folks say leave it, frost kills the nest in a few weeks. Down here our first freeze might be December, and some of these nests just don't die. So I'm inclined to deal with it, but I've never killed a nest this size. Labeled wasp dust at the entrance? Soapy water drench? Call someone? And when — dusk, night, dawn? I'd like to keep all my skin.
#yellowjackets#wasps#robbing#apiary-management
▲ 9 votes💬 4 replies
4 replies
GeorgiaWes · Sep 16, 2026
Take it out. A nest at 20 m in September is at peak population, and in our climate some southern yellowjacket nests overwinter and become perennial monsters. Method: mark both holes in daylight with a flag, then go at full dark when everyone's home. Suit, veil, gloves, red headlamp — they don't see red well. Puff a labeled wasp and hornet dust into each hole; they track it into the nest for you. Check in two or three days and repeat if there's traffic. Never gasoline: illegal, useless and it poisons the ground.
AbejaMiguel · Sep 16, 2026
Same approach in Jalisco: flag the hole by day, go back at night when it is cool and every wasp is inside. For small ground nests the old trick of a glass bowl set over the entrance at night works too — they don't dig a new exit and the nest dies in a week — but for a nest with that much traffic and two holes I would use the dust as GeorgiaWes says. And cover the second hole with a sod of earth after dusting the first, so they all come out the one you treated.
MayaBees · Sep 17, 2026
Oregon view: I destroy nests inside my apiary's radius and leave the ones out in the woods, since yellowjackets eat a lot of caterpillars and flies too. Twenty metres from the stand is inside the radius. Two things to keep in mind after: there's often a second nest nearby, so watch the traffic pattern next week, and the pressure on your weak hives won't vanish overnight — the foragers that were out when you dusted still come home to your entrances for a couple of days.
TexasBeeSam · Sep 17, 2026
Dusted both holes at 10 pm, and it turned out the second hole was real — plenty of traffic in it this morning until about noon, then nothing. Zero wasps at the hive entrances this evening for the first time in weeks. Will repeat in three days per GeorgiaWes and keep an eye out for nest number two.