My back yard is swarmed with yellowjacket wasps every August and
September. It can make it tough to sit by the pond with a drink or eat
dinner on the deck. They are attracted by the flowering silverlace
vines on the fence and deck railing. I have set traps for them, put out
borax ant-bait and swatted them with no real effect on the population.
I never used a hornet blaster because the poison in those is extremely
toxic to fish (and the rest of the world). Rather than cut down the
vines I set out to take the battle directly to the wasps themselves. I
found their nest, it was actually in a hole in the bricks of my house.
I got my wet/dry shop vac and vacuumed up about a gallon of soapy water
and then set the crevice tool of the vac beside the entrance of the
nest. Over the space of 10 minutes it sucked up every wasp on their way
in or out of the nest. As soon as they were flying within 5 inches of
the nozzle they would dissappear down the black hole. I let the vac sit
on the deck for a few more minutes to make sure the wasps had drowned
in the soapy water and then emptied the contents out into some fine
netting. I had killed almost 2 cups full of yellowjackets in the space
of 10 minutes without poison and never got stung.
I'll continue with the traps but any time I find a wasp nest I'm going
to get the shop vac out again. It really worked.

Cam