This time of year in Tahoe (and elsewhere) yellowjackets become a major nuisance to those who like to eat outdoors and even a threat to people with allergies. The aggressive little critters have ruined many a breakfast on the deck and afternoon BBQ’s! We also got a huge nest of them in our attic this year, and hoped to find a way to avoid using horrifically toxic products like Raid. When you go to the hardware and grocery store, you can generally find traps that cost about $7, but they work very slowly and waste materials and money! Check out our home-made method to eliminate yellowjackets:

  1. The first step is to get your materials together: an empty carton/bottle, string, dish soap (Oasis works great), a chunk of fish, and scissors.
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  2. Start by cutting the top off the plastic milk bottle so you have a cylindrical container.
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  3. Next, poke four holes in the container which you will use to attach string to.
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  4. Cut four equal lengths of string.
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  5. Tie the string into the container and together so you can hang the container.
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  6. Tie a piece of string through the fish, making sure the meaty side of the fish is facing towards toward the bottom of the string.
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  7. Hang the fish in the center just over the top rim of the container.
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  8. Fill the container with water, and add about a tea-spoon of soap (the soap breaks the surface tension of the water so when the yellowjackets hit it, they get trapped).
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  9. Hang the trap anywhere you want and soon it will look like this:
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As you can see, we got about 100 in there, and we only had the trap up for about 12 hours! The nest in our attic has been mostly cleared out and we can now actually use our deck again!