Eliminate That Yellowjacket Nest Early in the Season
By Chris Williams on June 11, 2015.
A German Yellowjacket nest
My daughter saw what look like yellowjackets going into a hole in the ground by our back deck. Could that be a yellowjacket nest? I thought they nested up in trees. H. A., Sharon, MA
Some yellowjackets do make aerial nests in trees, but our most common and pestiest yellowjacket, the German yellowjacket, nests mostly in the ground (see Where Do Yellowjackets Nest?). If you dug up a yellowjacket ground nest, you would see that it is still a papery nest covering combs with eggs or larvae, it’s just in a ground cavity rather than in a tree or wall void.
Yellowjacket nests are well underway now in early summer. A nest will continue to add worker wasps and grow in size and numbers until fall. A mature German yellowjacket nest can contain up to 4,000 wasps by midsummer. That means that your chances of interacting with yellowjackets around your deck will also increase as the summer progresses.
If the yellowjacket nest was in an uninhabited area of your yard, it might not need to be eliminated, but given the proximity to your deck, it should be destroyed for your own safety and comfort. If you grill or eat, or drink outside on your deck, you will definitely have aggressive yellowjackets in your face, especially in late summer when yellowjackets’ foraging habits change. If you have children or pets that play near the ground nest, even more reason to have it treated by a professional exterminator (see Yellowjacket Nests Too Close for Comfort?).
Early Nest Treatment is Better Than Later
As you can imagine, it’s a lot harder to treat and eliminate a very large yellowjacket nest than it is to deal with a much smaller nest. We encourage our customers to have a pro get rid of those developing nests as soon as they are spotted. The earlier in the season, the better.
Give Colonial Pest a call today and have our specialists check out that nest and survey your property for other developing nests, as well. Then you can rest a lot easier as the summer progresses. Check out this blog, Make Your Yard Less Attractive to Yellowjackets, for tips on preventing yellowjacket nests in the future.