Some years are worse than others for yellow jackets.  I've read and been told that dry years are worse, and that seems true.  Supposedly they are beneficial insects because they prey on pests, but they aren't too beneficial when they sting me and my family, our livestock, and feast on my honeybees.  This is especially bad in the fall, when I can see them overwhelming any defense the bees mount to steal their winter stores of honey and pollen, and carry away their larval young and developed adults.  They will even kill the queen.  The trick is to act against the yellow jackets and not the bees.  This is what works for me.

​I want to start by saying that I am not an expert at composting.  We have enough animals that we having a meaningful amount of manure and soiled bedding to compost differently than in a backyard garden.  When we had a garden compost pile, I had a ring made of fencing material and I would toss retired garden plants into the ring.  The idea was to turn it every month or two, and by spring it would be ready to incorporate into the garden.  Rabbit and other vegetarian pet waste could go in it, but no cat or dog waste, and no meat or dairy products.  I've also seen containers that you load and turn, which look nice, but the volume it processes is not a good fit for a small farm or homestead with livestock ... unless you have  a couple dozen of them, I suppose, and lots of time to tend them.

​I've also found information about large-scale composting such as at feedlots and high-density dairies.  I think a small farm or homestead is probably closer to those in that I don't want to do it all by hand, but it's still not the same.  Composting doesn't have to be that complex.  (You can look into the carbon-nitrogen ratio, but it has seemed fairly good for me so far.)  Properly composted livestock waste kills pathogenic microbes, some seeds (but not all), and promotes the growth of soil-building microorganisms.  We currently use a tractor, but with the fencing of our "official" farmyard, we will also use hogs.