Yellow Jackets in Western New York: What to Do When You Spot a Nest
Table of Contents
- How to Identify a Yellow Jacket
- Why Yellow Jackets Are a Problem
- What to Do If You Find a Nest or Entry Point
- Why Call a Professional?
If you’ve ever been enjoying a late-summer barbecue only to find yourself dodging aggressive buzzing visitors, you’ve likely crossed paths with yellow jackets. These wasps are a common sight in Western New York from mid-summer through early fall — just when we’re trying to savor those last warm afternoons before the kids head back to school and the evenings turn crisp.
Unlike honeybees that focus on pollination, yellow jackets are opportunistic hunters and scavengers, which means your picnic table, trash bin, or soda can may be a prime target. And when food sources dwindle in late summer, they become even bolder in their search.
How to Identify a Yellow Jacket
- Appearance: Bright yellow and black striped body, smooth and shiny (not fuzzy like bees). About ½ inch long.
- Behavior Clues: Fast, darting flight patterns and a tendency to hover aggressively if you get too close.
- Nest Locations: Often underground, inside wall voids, under eaves, or in shrubs. If you see a steady stream of them entering a hole in the ground or a small gap in your siding sort of like an airport, you’ve likely found the nest entrance.
Why Yellow Jackets Are a Problem
- Aggressive Defense: They’re quick to sting if threatened — and they can sting multiple times making them a very dangerous risk to any pet or family member approaching a nest.
- Allergic Risks: Stings can cause serious reactions for some people and send hundreds of thousands of people to the emergency room every year.
- Property Issues: Nests in wall voids can grow large and be difficult to remove. The remnants of nests can also attract other crawling insects to feed off the larvae inside.
What to Do If You Find a Nest or Entry Point
If you spot where yellow jackets are coming and going, resist the urge to seal it up right away. Trapping them inside can drive them deeper into your home — and closer to living spaces. Instead:
- Keep Your Distance – Stay at least several feet away from the nest entrance.
- Mark the Spot – Use painter’s tape in a safe, nearby location or place a small marker in the ground to note exactly where the activity is.
- Reduce Attractants – Keep trash bins tightly closed, pick up fallen fruit from trees, and cover any drinks when sitting outside. It is common for yellow jackets to enter a soda can and sting someone’s mouth as they go for a sip not knowing what is inside!
- Avoid DIY Sprays at the Entrance – Many store-bought sprays contain repellents that can drive yellow jackets deeper into the nest, especially if the nest is in a wall void. This can often times push the yellow jackets inside the nest to search for another way out which oftentimes means into the home.
Why Call a Professional?
Yellow jackets aren’t a pest you want to “wait out.” Nests can reach tens of thousands of wasps by late summer, making removal more dangerous as time goes on. Eco Serve Pest Services uses targeted treatments that eliminate the colony and any yellow jackets that are out foraging for food and building materials as they return back to the nest.
Eco Serve focuses on protecting your family, and also offers year-round home protection plans to safeguard against common household pests — including yellow jackets, carpenter ants, spiders, rodents and more. Contact Eco Serve Pest Control to learn more about our stinging insect control service your home.