This has been a banner year for all the nasty flying insects in our end of the world! We have industrial strength quantities of yellowjackets, wasps AND bald-faced hornets this year. This is the first time we've seen these numbers of all three at once! Only plus side is that we also have lots of honeybees.
We bought one of the disposable yellowjacket traps (looks like a piece of junk, with a plastic baggie that a yellow top pulls out of). Yow! Set it up and stand back! It was swarming with yellowjackets within 5 minutes of hanging it. The darn thing filled up in less than 48 hours! Heh, DH is off buying more as I type.

The yellowjackets were around in large numbers earlier this year, but now they're scarce. We've had a lot of heavy, stormy downpours, so I think the weather put a damper on their activities. I hung a couple of fake hornet nests in my greenhouse to deter yellowjackets from nesting in there, and they seem to have worked. The solitary wasps are not taken in by the fakes though.

Ah, lucky you! We've had a month of hot, dry weather and the one little rainstorm we got a few days ago did nothing to discourage our local nasties. Been really hard to take care of the garden for dodging all those stingers! They're just all over the ground! Got three stings on my hand about a week ago. Grrrrr, still itching!

If it's any consolation, they were bad here last year, and built a nest under the house's siding, from where they managed to find a way into the basement. DH spent a lot of time chasing them around the family room with a fly-swatter. I have a phobia about yellow-jackets, and can't be in the same room with a live one.

I feel that way about anything with wings!

I've had surprisingly few stingers this year. Plenty of pollinator bees and such, but haven't yet found a yellowjacket or wasp nest. Knock on wood.

Ha! Probably because they're all over here!

Got stung 3x after watering a wooden container with a grape vine in it. They came a flyin and hit me before I knew what was going on. They had bored a hole in the bottom of the box and nested there. Later I sprayed with hornet wasp spray. It killed all those in site but found out later they were still there. Guess I was afraid to get closer to spray up into the hole. Think I'll wait until it gets cooler to try it. Those things hurt and unlike a honey bee they can keep stinging you.

Yup, they definitely get testy if you mess around near their nest! I can't believe DH didn't get stung; we found a nest on the underneath of the barbeque that sits right next to where he has a chair on the porch. Heh, it is now a "was" nest, but there are still lots. We've killed off thousands of them in those disposable traps. (However, I'm not sure they work in your end of the world. There were a number of negative reviews of them on Amazon from people on the east coast.)

We've had an unusually heavy amount of all types of stinging critters this year. We've filled up 4 or 5 of those hanging traps and need to get some more, if anyone has gotten another shipment in. Greg hit Home Depot, Big R, and Walmart when he was in the big town of Omak a week ago, and they were all out of stock, along with both of our local hardware stores and the feed store. I did finally find some at the local pipe store and bought all 4 that they had. We have so many bees buzzing around our grapes that it's hard to get near them. The birds don't even try! We've got loads of yellowjackets, baldface hornets, wasps, honey bees, and bumblebees. So far I've only gotten stung once this year. We've had some of those giant Jurassic bumblebees this year - they always amuse me. Greg likes to pet them.

I ordered a bunch of those disposable traps from Amazon (just got to make sure you order the West of the Rockies version in this area!). Our local stores were out too! I've lost count of how many of those traps we've filled. A friend of mine (who is much braver than I! ) emptied out one of those disposable traps, added some additional attractant and water, and stapled it closed to reuse it. Said it worked great. She also suggested getting one of those BIG fly traps and putting the attractant in it. I'll bet you can find just the attractant more easily than the actual traps.

You guys are really getting hit with those darn wasp and yellow jackets. I had an in ground yellow jacket nest in my front yard but I sprayed the heck out of them with carpenter bee killer and they are all dead.