Matt, hideous and horrible earwigs, no wonder you were on a vendetta to get rid of them. I wonder what purpose on earth they serve? Hmmm....maybe to feed predator bugs, wonder which ones :)
Dane, I wish I could send you down some of my duck eggs. It is the Indian Runners that have the pretty bluish ones, and the shell on them is so tough, it is really hard to break, wonder if they would make it through the border?
About the yellowjackets. Don't doubt that they will be harassing your bees. My two summers of beekeeping, I didn't have problems with them until about the middle of August (eeks!!!! we are almost there). Then they became very aggressive with the bees. But I am already one up on them. I have the wasp traps set around the apiary and yep, they have been enticed to the cheap old beer that I buy for them, the flies seem to really like it too. So that is good because I have an over abundance of flies around this year too.
Those blasted yellowjackets. The other day I had to turn off the electric fence so I could pull out some tall grass. I opened the little house that houses the internal parts of the electrical, it is about 1' by 2' in dimension. What do you think I saw in there. About 4 good sized yellowjacket nests with those critters all over the top of it. Well, I lose it, I get my runner and start pounding the heck out of them. I won't use any kind of insect control near the bees, so I took a good chance that these nasties would attack me. I killed most of them, and then with an enormous amount of glee, I grabbed out the remainder of the nests and looked at them really good. Yep, larvae growing like crazy. Two days later I looked inside again. Sure enough they had started to rebuild. So I pounded the heck out of them too. Got rid of them all I think, cause a couple of days later, no yellowjackets. My enemy, no place on my farm.
Have a wonderful day, beautiful day. Cindi