Couldn I get rid of the yellowjackets by finding the nest and killing it?
In theory this is the best strategy. However, yellowjackets forage for about 1 mile from their nest and therefore, if you wanted to get rid of all the yellowjackets flying around your property, you would have to locate every nest within a 1 mile radius and eliminate it. In urban areas, this would mean searching around all your neighbor’s homes. In natural areas, this would mean searching every tree trunk, rodent burrow, stream bank, pile of rocks and trash heap to see if there were yellowjackets in there. This would be basically impossible.
