As the winter season passes and we get to late spring, we quite often start to see solitary Queen Wasps out and about on the hunt for a suitable nesting place. This can be in sheds, in lofts in gardens or pretty much anywhere the Queen sees as a viable or safe location to build her nest. The locating, collecting matter and building of nests is actually very fascinating to observe. The nests start off looking like a small upside down cup, usually hanging from a ceiling in a shed or loft.
You will quite often see the Queen Wasp busy working away. Inside the small cup which is often no bigger than a golf ball, you should be able to see the start of a few cells being built within the nest.
Unless disturbed or destroyed, this will be the nest location that at times could be built as the home for potentially thousands of wasps! As the nest builds you will start to see more and more “Workers” coming and going from the nest. They bring material back to the nest that can be eaten or used to make the nest bigger. It is usually now that as pest controllers, we start to get calls to attend. If the call doesn’t come in because you’ve seen the comings and goings from the nest, then it may be that you have heard a strange scratching sound in the ceiling or wall. This is often described as a “popping” sound.
The popping or scratching sound can often be attributed to the the wasp larva eating or wasps chewing through your ceiling or wall. In this video to above, I was able to observe/ hear and record wasps chewing through into a study. This was recorded in late June 2022. The owner had already used some filler to fill the hole but this had been of little effect as they just chewed through that too. This can be a frightening experience but the truth is the wasps are just creating more nesting material. It’s more of an unfortunate coincidence that they end up in your house this way. At this point it is definitely fair to say that the nest needs to be dealt with or removed as they will continue to chew through unless stopped. This nest was dealt with from outside of the property but I was able to place a plastic cover over the hole in the study to stop any wasps making an escape into the study! A good indication of an active nest and if you are in your loft will be sighting multiple wasps crawling around on the outside of the nest.
So how do we deal with wasps nests? We have several options available to us. The preferred and safest option is to use our dusting apparatus. It allows us to have remote access to the nest. Sometimes as shown below, this remote access can be quite up close and personal! We do have an extendable wasp dusting pole that allows us to apply the insecticide to the nest entrance up to eight metres high. Where we can, we avoid the use of ladders as climbing up a ladder in a wasp suit can bring its own set of dangers! Another method we use is a direct spray canister method. This would be more viable in a loft space for instance and if the nest entrance is either not located or simply too difficult to treat.
Whatever method we use, you have our wasp nest guarantee. This means that we guarantee our treatment, meaning you will have nothing more to pay if we have to revisit. As of the posting of this blog, we have a 100 percent success rate! Hopefully that’s not tempting fate!
Call us today on 07830127232 to get booked in! We currently charge £60 for a wasp nest removal in Maidstone or around Kent. You can find out more by clicking here
We look forward to hearing from you!
