The now (hopefully) concluded yellow jacket season of 2014 in New Hampshire and Massachusetts will be one to remember for a very long time. It has only been a few weeks since I had my last appointment to destroy a yellow jacket nest (for a local real estate company), so I’m crossing my fingers that that is it. I’m so sick of them!

Colonial Pest Control had triple the number of complaint calls for yellow jackets this year as opposed to last season. From about mid-July on throughout August and September, it seemed like I was getting four or five calls per day in my schedule. I have no doubt all of our company’s technicians and other pest control firms were experiencing the same.

I’m not quite sure if there is any plausible explanation for this season’s increase, and I’m not going to speculate. As you can see, this author had a rather unpleasant encounter with a ground nest that I accidently ran over with my lawn mower. I got six stings in all on my hands, neck, and feet! My wife was similarly attacked when she came outside to see what all the yelling was about. (As you may know, the stings hurt like hell!) Several hours later, my hand looked like this. Since I’d never reacted this badly to getting stung, my wife insisted that I go to the ER and get it checked out.

One thing I find amazing is how far they will chase if you disturb them. After my wife was stung, she ran back into the house and they followed her right to the door. That distance was almost one hundred feet!! She grabbed her car keys to go pick me up because had run through the neighbor’s yard to the next street over, and they chased her into the car as well! I got my revenge a couple of days later. Oh, and of course, all this ‘fun’ happened on my vacation week!

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