For several weeks I noticed a faint scratching sound in my ceiling and around one wall. Something was in there, but what?

One day I noticed a few yellow jackets flying around inside the house. The yellow jackets had been the source of the scratching sound, and now they had scratched completely through the drywall in one spot. I patched the drywall temporarily with duct tape so the yellow jackets could not continue entering the interior of the house. Then I went outside to see where the yellow jackets were entering the exterior. Above one wall, where it meets the underside of the roof, there was a small opening through which I could see steady traffic of yellow jackets flying in and out. I needed to kill the yellow jackets.

At night when the yellow jackets were mostly inactive I screwed a screw into the wall just under the yellow jackets' hole. I then screwed an eyelet into the end of a vacuum cleaner hose. I set the vacuum cleaner inside the nearest window, hooked the end of the vaccum cleaner hose to the wall right below the yellow jackets' hole, and sealed the partially open window around the vacuum cleaner hose with duct tape. In the morning, when the yellow jackets were active again, I turned on the vacuum cleaner. As yellow jackets attempted to fly or crawl in or out of their hole, most of them were vacuumed up.

After a few days of vacuuming yellow jackets there were no more yellow jackets left to kill. When I was sure all of the yellow jackets inside the vacuum cleaner were dead, I emptied them and counted them. I had killed 3000 yellow jackets from the hive above my ceiling.