My uncle, Ray, had a lawn chair that he wouldn’t give up on. Aluminum frame, woven nylon straps, the kind that leaves waffle marks on the backs of your legs. He sat in it every Sunday at the edge of his yard where the grass ends, and the pines start. My aunt tried to throw it away twice that I know of.
One August afternoon, my uncle came through the back door faster than I ever saw that man move, chair still in his hand, hat gone.
He’d set his chair down four feet from a hole he had ignored all summer, a yellowjacket nest.
The yellowjackets didn’t move in. They got flooded out.
Most people around here don’t know yellowjackets live underground. They take over an old rodent burrow, chew wood into paper pulp, and build their nests down in the ground, where it’s dark.
Then we get a real storm.
Water goes down the hole and the nest floods. Whatever crawls out has to find somewhere dry, and around a Payson house, that means the shed, the gap under the deck, or that woodpile you stacked against the garage in June and forgot about. Our team pulls them out of sheds and soffits every August. It’s one of the most common calls we get after a storm.
They’re meaner in August, too. A colony that started with one queen in spring is a few thousand strong by August, and the insects they’d normally hunt are thinning out, so they switch to sugar. That’s why wasps are turning up in your Coke can now, not in May.
Five ways to tell a yellowjacket from a honeybee
We don’t kill honeybees. We get them out alive, and we’re proud of it. So before you swing a magazine at anything, look at it.
1.) The waist. A yellowjacket is pinched in the middle as if it’s wearing a belt that’s cinched too tight. A honeybee is thick all the way through.
2.) The finish. Yellowjackets are smooth and shiny. Honeybees are fuzzy and a little dusty, more golden brown than yellow.
3.) The flight. Yellowjackets jink side to side before landing. A honeybee flies slowly and heavily, like she’s carrying groceries.
4.) What it wants. Bees want flowers. Yellowjackets want your lunch.
5.) Where it goes. A honeybee heads home to a hive. A yellowjacket drops into a hole in the ground or slips under a soffit, and if you watch where they disappear, you’ll see steady traffic in and out.
If it’s bees, call us, and we’ll move them. That’s what our bees page is for. If it’s yellowjackets, read on.
The part I wish every homeowner knew
Every summer, we hear from people who got stung over and over just mowing their own yard, sometimes ten times or more, before they could get clear of it. Most of them never saw the nest and couldn’t find the hole afterward.
That’s the tricky thing about yellowjackets. They like to nest in the ground or tucked under a landscape timber, and a nest can sit just a few feet from where you park the mower without you ever knowing it’s there. The vibration from the mower is often all it takes to set them off.
And it’s rarely just one wasp. When a yellowjacket feels threatened, it releases an alarm scent that calls the rest of the nest out to defend it, which is how one wrong step turns into a dozen stings in seconds.
So in late summer, when colonies are at their largest and most defensive, walk the yard before you fire anything up. Look for steady in-and-out traffic at a single spot in the ground, and check under the deck and around the woodpile. If you do find a nest, leave it alone and head inside. A ground nest isn’t a DIY job.
What we actually do about this issue
We locate the nest, treat it, then seal the areas where they’re likely to return. Eaves, weep holes, vent screens, and the gaps under your deck. Our technicians are licensed through the Arizona Department of Agriculture. You get a written plan and a flat price up front, and if something comes back between scheduled services, so do we, at no charge.
With wasps, discretion really is the better part of valor. The smart move is to back off, stay inside, and let a pro handle the nest.
Call or text us at 928-363-4232, or get a free quote. We cover Payson and the rest of Rim Country, and wasps and yellow jacket control is one of the things we do best.
