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Comment by foobarian | Hacker News Reader

Similar story, had a nest in the walls of a bay window bump. Too far up the side to spray effectively, but they had one weakness: there was a clear entrance spot. So I duct taped a pool vacuum hose next to it and ran it into the garage attached to a shop vac. Left it running for a day, problem solved. It was fun listening to the "ka-thunk" sound when each insect got sucked in. I think for next time I'll make some kind of detector based on audio to count the kills.

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I've used a shop vac as a first step, but if it's the only step, won't the queen survive and make more wasps? Unless you left it running for so long the queen starved to death, I mean.

My current approach is to wait until after dark, then fill up the nest entrance with spray foam (while wearing a beekeeper suit, just to be safe). I don't think that would work for walls, though - they'd probably find another way out.

In fact, that approach is explicitly warned against for walls. When they can't get out their former entrance, they will start to chew through the wall to make a new one - and there's no guarantee that new entrance will lead to the outside, rather than your living room.

My problem was the nest was hard to reach, and I was afraid that even if spraying did manage to kill the wasps, I would be left with a gross wet decomposing mass in the wall causing rot and water damage. I still need to figure out how to remove the existing nest but I'll wait until it's vacant :-)

My first time having yellow jackets in my wall, I sprayed poison in the entrance. They found a new way to leave the nest that was into my kitchen. That's when I stopped using poison.

I've needed two passes in the past, a few days apart. One to catch all of the adults, and another to catch any new wasps that emerged immediately after the first pass.

I used the shop vac method as well, occasionally shooting near their (hidden in a retaining wall) nest with a hose to piss them off and make them come out and get sucked up. I couldn't believe in the end there were two gallons of yellow jackets I captured.

Haha! We did the same thing! And we caught about 2 gallons of yellow jackets too. We let it run for about 10 hours (it gets them coming or going), and then when we took down the vac, I let it run and sprayed wasp spray to make sure they were dead. I freaked out when I opened it, seeing the shop vac was half full!!!!

Years ago one of my friends left a half-drank can of beer outside of my house on a hot summer night. I found it a few days later when I went to take the mower out of the shed. To my surprise when I picked it up I felt something rattling around inside. In the interceding period a bunch of wasps had apparently decided to help themselves to my buddy's leftover National Bohemian and ended up drowning in what I assume to be intoxicated bliss.

Or maybe they couldn't find their way out of the can in the dark, who knows. As a fellow Boh aficionado I can't blame them for trying.

This is the technique I have used, too! You can put soapy water in the shop vac.

This avoids spraying poisons around your household environment.

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