WASPs under our deck.... - Page 3 - DIY Chatroom

ultimatesooner · 09-10-2009, 02:18 PM

I like to use the foaming wasp spray and give the nest a good coating at night.

Go back in ~5 minutes and they will all be on the ground dying

MarieSusan · 10-26-2009, 01:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by diyntn

We have a bad problem with wasps building under our deck. I am removing the decking and have already gotten stung. I have covered the top in plastic and bombed (just a bug bomb, couldn't find a wasp bomb) to no avail. They still are swarming underneath.
I have managed to get 1/2 of the decking off. But the nests are still under there. I think I'm gonna attack it from afar better. A long pipe as a pry bar, rather than the standard pry bar.
Two questions:

1-do you have any suggestions on how to kill them before I take the decking off?

2-Is there anything that I can do as I redeck this thing, to prevent them from getting this bad again? We were thinking maybe putting landscape cloth underneath the decking planks. ?? I dunno, just shootin in the wind there.

Thanks,
Mark

Hi, hope you find my article of interest

Firstly you need to locate where the nest is for me that was not easy as it sounds, as I could not find the nest anywhere, it started off where one day I had 2 or 3 wasps flying around in my flat and it went on from there, all of a sudden from nowhere a wasp would appear and then another one, and then more and more.

It was the middle of summer and I had every window closed as I thought that was where they were coming in from, but that did not help, so as well as having a very hot flat this did not seem to be helping the situation. I then blocked up the air vents in the kitchen and bathroom as I thought they were coming in through there too, but that did not stop them. I was looking everywhere to try and locate how they were getting in and just could not work it out. I would get up in the morning and there would be between 6 to 10 wasps flying around my flat, sometimes more. I had a can of wasp spray in every room.

Eventually I called a Pest Controller out but even he could not locate the nest either, he too had looked everywhere, but he could just not locate how they were getting in. This was now getting serious as every day I would have more and more wasps to contend with and I hated them, I would be sat there watching the TV and they would just appear from nowhere and start dive bombing me.

This went on for nearly 2 weeks and one day I was in the kitchen and I saw one just about to go down the plug hole in the kitchen sink so I quickly turned the tap on until it went down and then put the plug in, and it was then when it struck me, that’s where they were coming from as there was nowhere else where they could get in, so I ran into the bathroom and put all the plugs in and that was the answer, from then on in I had no more wasps, the nest was in the drains which was not visible and that’s how they were getting in, so once I put all the plugs in that was the end of the wasps, but it was not a very nice experience at all.

This was quite an unusual situation, as to the location of the nest. Wasps usually make their nest in darker places such as eaves and in attics and most of the time the nests are easy to locate, outside they can make nests anywhere, again they would be in darker places, like in bushes and they are not usually visible, you will find that they would be right in the middle hidden away amongst the branches and leaves.

You should never ever go near a wasp nest, if they feel threatened they will sting you, if you do think you have a wasp nest you need to call one of our Pest Controllers who is trained to deal with these, never try to eradicate these yourself. Also another point to remember is once they have died they don’t go back to the same nest the following summer they only use it the one time, so if you do ever find an old nest and there does not seem to be any wasps about, the chances are it’s a dead nest and they will never return.
Wasp nests can still be active in the winter months too, it is not unusual to have an active nest in December and January, however these will be very few and far between, this is due to the fact that unlike bees they have not yet developed methods to store food for the winter months.

Before this happens though new queen bees and males have been developed and have swarmed out of the colony to mate, the male soon dies after mating, but the young fertilised females will search for a sheltered spot where they can spend the winter, dormant queens can be often found in outhouses and lofts during the winter.

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stuart45 · 10-27-2009, 06:10 PM

My wife found a wasps next in a hole in the garden. She told me to get some ant killer on the way home from work and put it down the nest to get rid of them. I forget to get it, but just pushed a load of soil down the hole and thought that would stop them and told her I had used ant killer and finished them off. Overnight the little gits had dug out the hole again and when my wife went near it to take out some weeds with a trowel she thought it was safe. However when they saw her with the trowel they must have thought it was her that buried them and came out and attacked her. She looked like she was fighting an invisible Jackie Chan, but only got stung once. Wish I'd had the camera at the time

She didn't see the funny side at first and didn't speak to me all day, which wasn't a bad result. I look at wasps in a different light now, might even take them a bowl of sugar tonight.

hyunelan2 · 10-27-2009, 06:50 PM

On a related topic - if I wait until after the freeze... like a deep freeze... like February, and I knock the nests down, will the wasps be dormant/dead/hibernating? Since I took care of them under the lip of my pool, they have since started to build on the eves of the house. The house is too high for most sprays that I've had, and I don't want to be standing on a ladder if they decide it's time to fight.