We have a good hard freeze every year (we're way north of Ft. Mitchell - my dad's family originally came from that area) so they don't overwinter here. But they're still a royal pain. Some people pour gasoline down the burrows, but one of the really neat ways to get rid of them is to invert a large glass bowl over the entrance. They can't get out to forage, and since they CAN get out and they can see daylight, they don't dig another entrance, they just starve. I like the suffering aspect of it (I REALLY hate yellow jackets.)
What amazed me, in doing a search online, was the number of websites that talk about getting rid of them without harming them. Whatta bunch of nutjobs.
That's kinda how I found a yellow jacket nest, shortly after being carried over the threshold a couple summers ago.
I was weeding, I had a bucket with me to throw the weeds into, I was just about halfway through the flowerbed, and I moved the bucket down to the end, intending to weed my way over to it. Husband calls from the front yard, I go see what he wants, come right back. I then see what looks like a giant ball of bees all around the bucket. Like magic, I am suddenly back in the front yard telling sauropod "Honey, we have a big problem!" :D
He went and moved the bucket with a shovel, and all those yellow jackets went underground, like water down a sink. I had covered up their entrance with the bucket, and so they just piled up around it. There was probably just as big a traffic jam inside waiting to get out. I am glad I didn't accidentally kneel on it while weeding. The hole was only about an inch across, but it was right in my path.
I watched the yellow jackets come and go for a few days. On Day 1 it was just one in, one out every ten seconds or so. By Day 2 it was every second. By Day 3, it was like a yellow jacket tornado. Those things breed faster than flies.
We waited until after dark and dumped about half a bag of Sevin powder down the hole. The next day, we collapsed the hole. It was rebuilt within the week. We repeated with the Sevin and that time it got all of them.
There is nothing, and I repeat, NOTHING that I enjoy more than killing hornets and wasps, especially those nasty red wasps that hurt so much. When I was a young teenager I ran over an underground hornet's nest while mowing our yard on my Dad's brand-new riding lawnmower. When I realized I was being attacked by a swarm of very-angry hornets, I ran inside the house screaming and hollering (incoherently, I'm sure.)
Well, dear ol' Dad thought it was all pretty funny at first, but he didn't think it was quite so cute & funny when I got to the part of my story about how I "just jumped off the lawnmower and ran to escape certain death." The sudden, startled look on his face was just priceless. Whoops! His shiny new lawnmower was still running wide open against the house when he ran outside to find it. LOL! He STILL brings that up to this day!
Anyway, the next time I run across an underground nest, I'll go BUY a glass container if I have to. Thanks for the idea!