I always swore by a product called Wasp-Freeze. You have to have a pesticide license to buy it from commercial retailers. We used it on base since it will drop them from 20+ feet. I always have a can of it when doing junkyard crawls. It works instantly. You can order it from the below link without a license. Granted soap and water it cheap and easy but I can't carry that in my tool bag in the woods. http://store.doyourownpestcontrol.com/cgi-bin/pestcontrol.storefront/EN/product/default.aspx
I killed a bunch with an ammonia based glass cleaner. it wasnt instant, but not longer than a 45 seconds. . .I ended up looking for dead buggers for an hour after I sprayed them. . they were inside the house on the kitchen!
I had a mate come in and ask to borrow some WD40 about 10 years ago when I was living in the Barracks. I only had some silicone lube spray so I gave him that. Don't use silicone lube as a flame thrower, at least not up against something. Close enough and it will deposit a shit load on the target and set it on fire. I found that out when I was evacuated from the building after he was killing wasps. Said he was like 5-6 feet away from the target, a solid stream of flame not the big ball you get with WD40. The Dumb Ass!
Yeah it works, but would you throw a cup of diesel in the corner of your back porch ceiling? When I was a kid, my neighbor was this old mexican dude and he would wrap a bunch of shirts around a broom stick and dip it in diesel and light it on fire to kill bees. Sure it worked...but it always burnt the paint off the house. Honestly, when I first heard of the soap & water...I thought it was a stupid idea. Then the bees were getting pretty bad out on the back porch. Spraying Raid, Brake Kleen, and water did nothing but piss them off. So I gave it a try. An empty Go-Jo can with water & dishsoap hurled into the corner of the porch and they all dropped dead instantly. After 5 minutes in the Texas heat the soap was dried up, the bees were curled up, and the back porch smelled nice.
I found a Hornet's nest the size of a basketball, on the lilac bush in my back yard. If you think wasps/yellow jackets/bee's/etc are bad, try hornets. I bought 2 of the 20 foot spray bombs and let the nest have it till the first can was empty, then sprayed the second can and lit the stream. WOW! THAT did the trick. A couple weeks later you couldn't tell that there was ever a burned spot on the bush...
I just had a yellow jacket nest in the ground next to my front porch. Didn't want to use anything flaming so I got the Ortho Home Defense Max stuff for wasp, yellow jackets etc the foaming stuff. I got more than a dozen of them the first day. I would spray it in the morning when they were first getting up and flying around. They never bothered me but would get sucked into the foam trying to get in and die quickly. Growing up my Dad poured Kerosene down a hornets nest in the ground and lit it. It just burned and they were coming out on fire. It was cool!
do not get any of that on the siding on your house or the use it on the front window of your camper. its not pretty
I use hot shot - it sprays further and cost less than brake cleaner or carb and choke cleaner and lasts longer.
I've been using soap & water for the past 30yrs, it's cheap & kills any flying bug you got. If you have a lot of bees mix up a big batch in one of those pump up containers you use to spray weeds with. I go so far as to use my air gun to even fill the tank. Remove the spray nozzle, stick the air gun tip to the wand, pull the trigger to the tank & then pull the trigger to the air gun & fill it w/air untill the relief valve on the spray tank opens then let go of the spray trigger. You'd be surprised how far it will spray...joe
soap and water--- works on the flowers with aphids, on vegies in the garden- as dip when you transplant anything to keep bugs off of the roots, and kinda works on dishes
A pot of boiling water works. I have a bunch of the black and white Bald-Faced Hornets in my hedge right now. Not to sound like a tree hugger, but these kind are apparently good to have around. They kill flies and other insects, and they're not aggressive unless you distrub the nest. Unlike yellowjackets, which are pure mean. Unfortunately they have to go since I need to trim my hedge (next to where I park the car.) Nest is the size of a football. If they were somewhere in the backyard, I'd leave 'em alone. -JJ
I leave open beer cans around the garage, they seem to like beer. Later, when they are good and drunk and passed out, I pluck their wings off. When they come to in the morning, imagine their surprise! Sometimes I just pull one off, so I can see them try to come after me in circles.
I'm allergic to bee's, and i've used evrything from fire to Berryman's. I will try the soap idea... cheaper anyway, as long as they are dead i will leave the fun aspect to something else :~)
goddamn right! I have a really bad beetle problem right now and it just so happens that the kid I work with keeps stealing my tools and not putting them back. It is also a nice coincidence that he brought his own personal microwave to heat up his hot pockets. He goes on a long weekend and leaves me holding the bag with my tools spread out all over the shop. Friday comes along and I take his microwave home. As twilight appraoches I start capturing the beetles in mid flight with a bug net toy kit I bought at Wal Mart. Open the microwave, beetles go in, set to high and 10 min.....viola the worst mess in a microwave to date. he came into work on monday and said someone shit in his microwave. Ill bet a microwave would be an awesome weapon against a hornets nest.
The Jalopy Journal
