No, I have been successful many years. But it requires diligence and maybe more traps than you started with.
I have never seen honey bees in my wasp traps, but I would not be surprised if it was catching a few of them.
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When the yellowjackets get at the figs I toss them all in a bucket and add enough water to cover, it ferments and they seem to just get drunk and drown themselves after a while. I’ve never had honey bees get in there, I think the alcohol deters them. Did a quick Google search and it looks like some people add vinegar to sugar solutions to deter honey bees also.
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They are difficult to control if you wait too long here. It can take a couple weeks and up to a dozen Victor reusable wasp traps which come with an umbrella, so if you add a bit of citric acid with a 2-1 water- apple juice concentrate mix, plus a splash of dish detergent and empty them every couple weeks, you can get a handle on them- at least in my neck of the woods. So far.
Honey bees just don’t like traveling through the holes that the yellow jackets and their horrid bald faced cousins will.
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Yellow Jackets can be very intense here, especially if you live in a wooded area outside of the city. In August and September you can stand still in the woods and hear the entire forest buzzing with them. It can be surprisingly loud.
The best control method I have found is to put Yellow Jacket traps out in the Spring. Every queen you trap is an entire colony that doesn’t form.
If you don’t get them in the Spring, you have a much larger and more difficult problem to deal with. You can actually follow them back to the nest if you have the time and patience for that sort of thing, then spray the nest after dark when they are all there. Most of us don’t have the time for this.
If you are really frustrated with Yellow Jackets this time of year, you can deploy the weapon of last resort. We call it the Redneck Wasp Trap. On bad years, we have been able to fill a 5 gallon bucket with the bodies of dead Yellow Jackets. That’s a lot of dead wasps.
To construct the Redneck Wasp Trap, you need a large roasting pan (or something similar), a wooded dowl, straight stick, small pipe or the like that will span across the roasting pan, some fishing line or thread, water, dish soap, and a raw chicken leg. Select a high traffic area for the trap and make sure your pets can’t get to it. Use the fishing line to strap the raw chicken leg to the wooden dowl. Place the wooden dowl with raw chicken leg attached across the roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with water up to within about 3/4" of the raw chicken leg - no closer. Put some dish soap in the water to break the surface tension of the water. As you watch the Yellow Jackets swarm the raw chicken leg, some of them end up in the soapy water and cannot escape. It is amazing how quickly they get caught. Empty the dead bodies and replace the raw chicken leg as necessary.
If you have a really bad Yellow Jacket problem, this trap is a wonder. A real weapon of mass destruction. Since it is baited with raw meat, you just need to keep the pets and critters out of it. (It can be covered or put away at night since wasps are not active at night and critters are).
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Wow, and here I thought we had the worst “yellowjacket story” of anyone in the country. Sheesh…
They are pretty bad here though. For the first few summers, mowing the yard was hazardous duty. Had a few stings but luckily spotted and took care of most in-ground nests sting-free. I think one year we found 7 nests, in the (~1/2 ac) of front and back yard.
So I set about researching how to deal with them, their lifecycle, etc… Early on we tried a few things, with mixed results. For the past few years we’ve settled on a simple hunt-and-destroy methodology.
Some number of workers go off in the fall and find a place to hibernate over the winter. They emerge in the spring as a queen and set out building a new colony. The queen is very active during this time, feeding and nest building. They are perhaps 1.5X the size of a worker and once you get attuned to them, make a fairly distinct sound while flying.
Every few days we walk around the yard and orchard area with a pump-up hand sprayer, filled with water and a bit of dish soap. When we locate one flying a few inches off the ground, in a zig-zag pattern, hunting for bugs. We simply blast it with a stream and walk over and step on it.
The first year we killed half a dozen or so this way. Hadn’t really refined the “hunt” yet at that point. The next year I believe it was 17. Last year, from spring to early summer, we killed 86. Really had it dialed in at that point… This year it was 43, which I hope was a decrease because of our efforts last year.
Each queen can lay between 5 and 10 thousand eggs in a season. Therefore a dead queen, before she lays any or many eggs, is the best kind in my book! We’ve seen very few workers this year, one or two around some hummingbird feeders, not tons of them like we’ve seen in the past.
This year we took the time to snap a photo of every one killed. Kind of made a game of it 
https://photos.app.goo.gl/QiXefnREveVayd3p9
Next spring, we’ll be on patrol again…
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Nice!
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I’d try traps but like with Japanese beetle traps I always had the feeling I’d be attracting more than would come without the traps. Know what I mean?
I don’t mind killing 'em but I don’t want to attract more of them to do it.
That’s why I was wondering if anyone had experience with alleged repellents like the Waspinator that appears to be more of a “stay out, we own this territory” kind of thing.
It sounds hokey I know but keeping them away would be ideal.
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I tried luring and killing them with Fipronil, it’s hard to judge the success levels though. Never saw one on the offered bait… Suspect I used too much Fipronil and they could sense it. It’s “micro-encapsulated” so insects shouldn’t be able to, but too large of a qty and I suspect they can.
Works great for killing known nests though. As long as not around flowers or anything that could lead to honeybee harm. Found a large hornet’s nest right beside our driveway this year. Water and a small amount of Taurus SC (Fipronil) in a sprayer, hit it from a safe distance, they are no more…
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While I am not a advocate of using poisons.
Yellow jackets are just too mean for their own good.
The above link , about fipronil baits may be appropriate some years.
If placed in a cage, hung out of reach, to keep birds and pets out of it, it may be very selective in what it kills.
Instead of trying to catch them one at a time in a trap.
They take this back to the nest, killing the whole nest.
I have not tried this, and this year amazingly I have not seen one yellow jacket here. Some years they are a big problem.
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I don’t think that is a factor for wasps, the fruits themselves are just as good a bait as the sugar water. Like I said, I have trapped them out with success many years. But I have to be diligent. I have four more traps on the way now and hopefully can control my population this year.
Once that is under control all I need to do is trap the groundhog, get rid of the ravens and all the other birds, etc etc etc … sigh.
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Thanks. I’m going to try a couple of traps. Is there a particular manufacturer you use? They’re not only available commercially, are they?
OY! Groundhogs. Got them too. They can take some mighty dumps, can’t they?
And got deer too. Probably a raccoon. And naturally birds. And Crows.
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I probably have crows not ravens … I got those two cross-wired when I was a kid and never fixed it.
You can use a pop bottle with holes in it. I ordered the following ones:
They have a light for additional attraction supposedly. I don’t really care about that, I like how they are more rain-protected.
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I was looking at those earlier on Amazon and I was wondering … why solar?
Has the solar component functioned over time?
Doesn’t seem to be necessary.
Thanks.
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It is supposed to aid in attracting the bugs, there is a UV light in it. One reason why I got this particular one is to see if it will trap any moths at night… an effective OFM/CM trap would be very cool!
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There are plenty of trap designs on youtube. Just do a yellow jacket trap or wasp search. I like this one if infestation is not too big they are attractive and easy to use. It does get water in it when it rains but that isn’t a big problem for me since it evaporates.
Here are a few others.
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