I've the remains of a large ground nest of I believe yellow jackets. It is built into a hill of garden compost. If I take a pitch fork to the pile and disperse all, will I come across any live and willing to sting wasps now, in March? Help!
Get a flash light and do it at night, especially on a very cold night and you should be ok. Get your significant other to hold the light and spread the risk:)
As long as it's cold enough, you can do it during the day. Wasps can barely move in temperatures near freezing.
So, I hope for more cold weather, (sorry), and just break up the compost pile or are you both suggesting I spray too?
It should be cold enough at night now to do it safely. Just break up and expose the nest with a shovel and crush all the inhabitants..
Just out of curiosity, I checked Wikipedia and found that yellow jacket colonies don't survive the winter. Only newly fertilized queens survive and usually start new nests. So it's very likely that the nest that you discovered is either empty or it's not occupied by yellow jackets.
Yellow jackets are beneficial predatory insects. They also help with pollination. I welcome them on my property and have a lot of them. During last 15 years I got stung once, when incidentally I sat on one of them.
You must not sit outside and eat/drink on your porch or deck very often? They are very attracted to food. I've been stung quite a few times. I even had one crawl inside a brown beer bottle, and when I took a drink it stung me in my mouth... They only become really annoying in late summer when they get really aggressive and defensive.
Tree Nut, As a matter of fact I am outside every day during the gardening season, whenever it is not pouring hard. I also have my lunch outside. Often wasps sit on one end of my sandwich when I bite on another. May sound funny to you, but it is so. You see, they have the amazing ability to detect that little piece of bread covered with sweet jam from a very far away. Would you? Suddenly there are many of them hovering around in a matter of minutes, may be even seconds. It is not surprising they are able to detect the smell of your increased perspiration at the sight of them, too. That gives them a warning that there is a danger. So they may bite in self defence. Since I am not afraid of them they feel safe in my presence. I have never tried to take one in my mouth, though. I expect it would feel in danger there inside, too. At the summer camp, when I was a child, we used to put honey on our lips though, to attract wasps and compete with each other who will attract most of them. There was a lot of laughter there, but I can't recall anybody being stung.
