Jackie, so sorry you went through that! Sounds painful and certainly not the peaceful gardening you had planned. I'm glad you are okay. Your story is a good reminder of what we can encounter with nature.

Holy Sh*t Jackie! That is terrifying. And imagine if it had been Africanized bees!

I was out the other morning trimming and snipping, and I ventured over to SGMC. It's always surrounded by honebees, but I suddenly realized that the sound-level of the buzzing was ramping up quickly.

I stopped what I was doing and backed off, and told DH to leave that area alone for a bit. Later in the year, I think that SGMC is due for a fairly firm pruning.

Oh my goodness, Jackie - I'm glad you're OK!! Multiple bee stings can be a problem even if you're not allergic if your immune system starts protesting the insult. I'm not allergic either, but I had to go to the dermatologist all summer a few years ago from just one lousy hornet or wasp sting (hurt like a burning poker when stung). At least yellow jackets have a relatively milder sting (not that they didn't hurt immensely either, of course). We had them nesting in the wood trim of our house a few years ago and I'd routinely flick 18 or 20 of them into soapy water from the closed windows inside each night when they'd crawled there from goodness-knows-where. I'd always seem to miss a few and step on them in the night, but being sluggish they weren't as aggressive as they might have been otherwise. Surprisingly, the kids slept OK after all this.

I was waiting for an even worse punch line to the story, after you'd mentioned you were OK health-wise. I was afraid you'd wake up the next morning to find that your neighbors had videotaped your wild dash into the house whipping off your t-shirt and that it had gone viral on UTube overnight. Small blessings at least that you have sympathetic neighbors (and a husband who's willing to take care of the nasty mess on your behalf).

Hang in there - cool baths and an adult beverage of your choice are prescribed from your GW friends.

Cynthia

That sounds so scary! I'm glad you are ok and your glasses are not broken. You might want to hang up a trap just in case others are in the area looking to rebuild the nest. Wasps and hornets are territorial and will stick around an area they like. I was able to shoo away some bees building a home in my compost bin by turning the sprinkler on them a few times a day until they left. They took most of the wax from the honeycomb to rebuild somewhere else.

I hope the pain goes away soon

A paste of baking soda and water is the old time way to draw some of the poison out/neutralize it.

We've seen some huge under stone/wood/anything and everything nests.

And our dog showed how much she trusted me when she was being bitten by a yellow jacket and she let me kill it when it was in the fur behind her ear. Her getting bitten was my warning that there was another nest to be found and eliminated.

So glad you weren't hurt even more.

Thank you all - the stings have turned into just very itchy spots, so my DH has been spraying them for me with a cortizone over the counter anti-itch stuff. It works very well. I went and looked at where the nest was just now for the first time - you can see the beginning of a tunnel going straight down - it is about 3 inches in diameter, and goes right into the dirt. Amazing.

Jackie

yellow jackets are very aggressive. If you are gardening and inadvertently get too close to their nest, they will attack you. Problem is that it's not obvious where their nest is. they will follow you across the yard and into your house as you have described. same thing happened to me! multiple yellow jackets and multiple stings.

I used chemicals to get rid of them. Not necessarily recommending that but it worked.

do it at night when it's dark, wear protective clothing like ski jacket, mask and gloves. I poured a solution of malathion on their nest.

One other thing we do when we find them. After a first poisoning, run a hose into the hole to see where the other entrances are.

Hope you are okay and on the mend. I am constantly reminding myself to watch for rattle snakes this year because the drought is moving lots of wildlife desperate for water and food into gardens. Be careful!

Well, you certainly have much more exciting times in your gardens then I do. I enjoyed reading your narrative (well-told), though if you had been really hurt, it would not have been an enjoyable story, would it!

Take care.

Kate

Oh, Jackie, that must have been horrifying! I probably would have added a heart attack to that if it had been me. Since I have several rather overgrown beds to weed out at the moment I'm going to be extra, EXTRA careful! Thank you!

Jackie so glad you are ok. Keep an eye on the sting areas and ice them and use topical Benadryl. Same thing happened to me a couple years ago while trimming bushes with the electric hedge trimmer in the front yard. Didn't realize there was a nest there till they had flown up my shorts and shirt and were stinging me. Ran into the back shrieking and pulling off my clothes - hubby out back mowing didn't hear a thing, but our neighbor guy (80 yrs old & on oxygen) got quite a show :). funny now but not so much then lol. Glad you found your glasses! The wasp spray works, took a couple applications after dark when they are all in for the night. Margaritas keep the swelling down :)

So sorry to hear this, Jackie! But please don't blame yourself. They could have started nesting there even if you had everything in pristine order.

I love and encourage bees, but I hate yellow jackets.

That sounds so scary! Glad you are ok. I had a recent encounter with something that stung me. Every year I get wild Passion Flower vines growing in my yard. I try to keep it out of the front of the rose beds or the vines will really cover the rose bushes. So I was going around pulling up some vines and I felt a pinch around my waist bad. I thought it was my belt pinching me, but it happened again. I didn't see anything. I went in the house and I had three bites, two by my navel and one above that. They immediately swelled up to about the size of a half dollar and became very hot and itchy. I put ice on them and then some benedryl spray. They itches for a few days, but no bad reaction. But this is three weeks later and I can still see the spots on my stomach.

Also yesterday, I was outside and of course the passion flowers are always covered with bees, usually the large bees that don't attack, and I felt something weird on my foot. It was one of those large bees and he then crawled up my leg! I just stood there, not wanting to startle him or I would get stung. Then I guess he figured out I didn't have any pollen and he flew off. WHEW!!!

I had a similar incident several years ago. My husband was on a business trip to Chicago and I decided to cut the grass. We had one of those 6 ft tall fences along a little bank. As I was driving along, my bottle of water fell out of the holder. I stopped the tractor and got off to get the water....and it had fallen in the opening of a nest! You know what happened next, similar to Jackie's story! I ran to the house ditching clothes as I was running leaving the lawn mower also running. I think I got stung about 10 times. I got some bee sting stuff, took some benadryl, and laid down on the couch crying. Just a little while later I went out to get the mower away from the nest. My brilliant idea was to rope the mower and pull it away with the truck. Just as I successfully roped the mower, lightning struck my DH's ham radio tower. I said to heck with this and went inside and went to sleep. the mower ran a little longer then ran out of gas. They weren't yellow jackets but some kind of small black hornet. It took several years for us to finally get rid of them for good. This is now one of the funny stories that my DH tells.

What a scary incident, Jackie. I'm glad you weren't stung even worse and found your glasses. I researched the best way to handle stings and to two top ones in effectiveness cost nothing and are always available in your home. The best is to apply ice to the affected area for 20 minutes and repeat after some hours. The other one is toothpaste! I've tried both and they do work.

It happened to me and my cousin and our dog when we were children, aged ten and nine respectively. I think the dog disturbed a yellow jacket nest and the creatures chased us, stinging us, for the equivalent of a city block. We retreated to my bedroom all three of us groaning and crying, the cocker spaniel worst of all. And I think we knew enough and were independent enough even then to put a paste of baking soda on the inevitable stings and burns of a childhood in which we were free to run about unsupervised all day, day after day.

My cousin recently told me that those days we spent together in the country were the best memories of his childhood, so .. forsan et haec memnisse juvabit. It is certainly a vivid memory, that's for sure! That was 60 years ago! Historical times, officially.

I have read that yellow jackets are not native to this continent but were introduced; and not only that -- they are not bees but a kind of wasp. Have not seen so many recently, myself, but I guess they are still around and as mean and nasty as ever.

Wikipedia says there are three native species plus a couple of imported species. The Eastern Yellow Jacket is very common here, and I have been attacked in my garden more than once. Certainly nobody should apologize for using insecticides against these viciously aggressive wasps. It's not just that they defend the nest; in October they seem to fly around looking for somebody to sting.

Country girl, What an ordeal!! Why do these things happen when nobody's around eh?

My Husband gets stung by the yellow jackets and wasps when he is mowing or trimming, so often.. The nests are invisible!!

Ouch!! and ouch to all fellow gardeners who got bitten, stung, scratched,cut, fall, slip, etc..endless... Be careful is so easy to say and hard to do when we are in a dream like state enjoying the garden!!

Too funny!! Michaelg " they are looking for somebody to sting in october"..:-).

the hummingbird feeder.. aah yes, they attack that thing vigorously!!:-(

I was drinking some soda while taking a garden break... and put the can down.. went to pick it up again... Oh no.. 5- 10 of them decided to have a free drink and went inside the can.. I am so glad, I saw that and left the can alone. They would not come out .. Sure they died in there...

I can just imagine myself with the fat lip.. had I .. ...

Love the orange juice idea.. you can see them in case...

The hummingbird photo is awesome. Thanks!

This works for bee stings but I'm not sure about wasp stings.

Pinch the area right away that was stung to keep the toxin from moving around. Run the hottest water you can stand on the area and repeat a few times with short breaks in between. The protein in the toxin is cooked and the pain will stop right away. I tried this after stepping on a bee and it worked very well. The hot water hurts less than the sting pain and there's no pain after the hot water treatment, just a red area which you can ice.

Back in the nineties when I was living in western Washinton we found a yellowjacket nest in our back yard. I remembered a classified ad I had seen in the paper and called up the Bee Man. He came out suited up as for outer space and vacuumed up the entire colony--it was a BIG nest--and that was it. The insects were commercially valuable at that time at least, so it didn't cost us a dime. Those of you with yellowjacket and hornets' nests might look into this method of eradication, as it's safe and doesn't call for insecticides.

I'm so glad we don't have yellowjackets here. I'm on good terms with the local wasp and bee population, and even the hornets aren't aggressive, thank goodness.

Thanks, michaelg! You have to stand very still and take a lot of pictures to get good ones of hummingbirds. I like that one because it shows the yellow jacket looking at the hummingbird like it is ready to attack.

Wow, what a horrifying story, that your glasses cost $750!

Up until this year, bees and so on have looked on me benignly (or should I say "bee-nignly"?), probably because I was in the garden as much as they, so we all knew each other and lived together contentedly. This year, I seem to have been stung at least three times (being stung doesn't bother me much, so I hardly notice it), which I attribute to the fact that, because I'm watering the garden less because of the drought, I'm out there much much less than is normal (well, normal for me) and so have lost my familiarity to them. Consequently, I've upped my wariness. Bee-ware!

So, my DH put a hose down the hole, and turned it on full pressure for one minute (this is all he was willing to do in our drought, and that is a LOT of water). Nothing. No water showed up anywhere else, no water backed up out of the hole, and no water appeared mysteriously in the nearby street gutter. I think that is really weird. Evidently the hole is connected to the center of the earth. We looked down the hole with a flashlight, and could see the collapsed "fabric" of the nest. I poured Malathion into the hole, and my DH has filled it up with gravel, because he thought dirt would just wash away. Hope this works.

Jackie

I have had them burrow all the way through a container into the ground to make their nest, not once but twice! Talk about a surprise when you are weeding or pruning. Luckily I didn't get stung either of those times. Tricky little devils!

My mom is allergic to wasps, but only in the last few years. Before that, she never had any problem. The doctor said to keep Benadryl with her and then she has an epi-pen, if she needs it. She also went in last year and got a series of shots...that are supposed to keep this from being a problem, anymore.

As for bees, yellow jackets, wasps, etc. They need water! Sally Jean Cunningham talks about the importance of bug baths in the garden. I have these everywhere and it seems to calm the little guys down.

Also, butterfly bushes (lovely up here and much scarcer than in CA) make the wasps act drunk. They sit on the blossoms and sway about, looking a little loopy and very happy. LOL

While I do think spraying them is the best thing to do by the house and walks, shed, etc....I try to keep the peace by encouraging them to go to the back and edges of the garden. Butterfly bushes, sunflowers, mints, catmint, and especially water will all bring them around. So we put all these away from paths and hopefully that will help :)

What are yellow-jackets? I had always thought you (Usians) were referring to wasps but I see they are being given a separate nominative category.

The southern edge of our wood is one huge wood ant territory which, after a painful encounter (while out peeing) including public clothes removal (pants) and shrieking, I no longer venture forth unless suitably armoured up (wellies and thick socks, gloves etc.)

On the other hand, we have all three UK woodpeckers, even the rare lesser-spotted, all feasting on ants.

Campanula they are a type of wasp - skinny waist, can sting multiple times. Ants!! Eeewwww!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_jacket

Eeewww! The picture of the gigantic (looks about 3 ft by 2 ft by 2 ft) nest in that article is scary, especially as EVERYTHING "winters over" in our climate, and so a nest could get bigger for years and years. That settles it - if we have another episode in the future I am calling an exterminator. We already had to do that once for yellow jackets a few years ago when they built a nest inside of one of the outside walls of our house (it was the wall of our bedroom, and the head of the bed was next to where it turned out their nest was - I heard buzzing, but my DH thought I was hearing things until I dragged him outside and you could see a constant stream of them flying back & forth to a crack in the shingles). The article says they eat bad bugs, which makes them "good bugs" in the garden, but if one of us gets attached again, I will not hesitate.

Jackie

OK - this is getting really creepy - like the Twighlight Zone. Yesterday my DH filled the yellow jacket's hole with gravel, and then I dumped a lot of dirt on top of the gravel, so the plants in that bed would not take offense. Today I was working nearby in the garden, and happened to look over towards where the hole used to be. It was back! No sign of the gravel, or of the dirt - just the hole even bigger than it was in the first place! I went running in and told him the yellow jackets had come back and emptied it out. He came out and said no, it was some sort of digging creature (take your pick - raccoons, skunks, squirrels...). He went and got a lot more gravel, and a heavy metal digging thing, and poured the gravel in and tamped it down, repeat several times. He says that even our digging critters will not be able to dig it up. I sprayed it with "critter go away" spray. I believe him intellectually, but a small part of me thinks that the yellow jackets have magic, and will keep coming back.......

Jackie

Jackie you have to spray it with insecticide - like black flag yellow jacket/ wasp killer. They will dig out of the gravel:). I hated to do it but the risk of us and the dogs getting stung outweighed everything. It took a couple of treatments even using that!

We did. First my DH sprayed it with the yellow jacket/ wasp killer, then I dumped in Malathion. News update - this morning the gravel my DH put in and tamped down yesterday was dug up - for sure by a digging creature, not the yellow jackets - you can see the digging marks, and the gravel is piled up. My DH is "not amused", and I think he is contemplating concrete......

Jackie

He didn't put down concrete, but did fill the hole up with gravel again, tamp it down, and then put chicken wire flat over the top of it. This has worked for us before, when raccoons were digging up my MIL's new lawn turf every night. We will see -

Jackie

Try also lemony scented dish soap. I spray it on my eaves and it keeps wasps from building nests. Spiders don't like it as well. Insects hate that lemony soap and it's a low cost way to keep them away from the house.

Campanula those yellowjackets were born cranky ( my old nursery co worker would say ornery ). I remember summer camp as a kid when they would surround the drinking fountains and not let you near. Then at lunch, they would land on the fruit punch we were given. I used to go in the bathroom with my friends before opening that punch just to keep them off of it. Still, other kids would open theirs and the tables we sat at to eat would be surrounded by those awful wasps. Can you dig a moat to keep the ants out of the area where your horsebox is?

It might be a skunk digging up the nest to eat the dead ones, Jackie! I had that happen each time I killed a nest for the last couple of years. This year they even dug up a nest that I didn't know about yet, so one with live yellowjackets. It's awesome!

The first thing I thought of when I saw your post title was yellowjackets, lol. The last time I was truly attacked (oh, there have been many times, usually on my mower), I threw my cell phone at them in the ruckus. Then, after putting baking soda on --because it really is magic with stings-- I had to figure out how to get my phone back from their nest! I didn't have to strip in that attack, though, so that's always good ;)

Lots of digging going on in our garden every night right now. I thought it was only the skunks - there is a pair with babies we have seen. However, last night at around 7PM I came out of our basement to see a Mama raccoon with 4 babies walking across our patio! (We live 4 blocks from the downtown of our town.) Every morning now I walk around putting the "divots" back which one of them has dug out of the lawn, and filling in the holes they dig in all of my pots. But - they don't bite me, so it is OK.

Jackie

Oh, no! Well some of them are sure to get a taste for your yellowjacket nests sooner or later, so maybe they'll earn their keep, too.

Once after I poisoned a YJ nest, 24 hours later someone had dug it up. Apparently a skunk or coon knew there were edible larvae down there and realized that the warrior guards were no longer on duty.

According to what I've read, the YJs do not reuse the nest from year to year, but the queen starts a new one--so closing the hole isn't necessary.

I hate yellow jackets!!!!!!!