Wasp Nest Removal / Wasp Pest Control Devon & Conwall

 Wasps make paper honeycombs to rear their young. The picture shows a wasp nest in early development. Wasp larvae hang in their cells waiting to be fed. We have taken some liberty with the wasps in this picture and broken the nest open to expose the inner workings. The interior of the nest is hardly ever exposed to daylight and the wasps conduct their business in near total darkness.

Have you a nest ? Your attention will be drawn to insects with yellow and black markings flying in and out of a hole or opening. The wasps enter and exit with great accuracy. Should you be compelled to check out where they're nesting, you'll typically see a paper ball hanging from a rafter or a raised area. The nest will range in size from a golf ball to a basketball, depending on the time of year. If you discover a nest any time between December and March, you are safe to remove it as it's dead and empty. Removing old nests is unnecessary because they cannot be reused by wasps in the future.

We remove nests whenever possible. In the case of an attic, the best practice is to check it out to see if the nest can be accessed, with a view to removal. Wasp nests can be treated with chemicals from the outside and left in place but you will be left with dying wasps crawling around the attic floor with the potential of half dead wasps dropping down through holes in the ceiling, eg. through downlighters, the attic hatch or gaps around hotpress pipes. The nest you believe to be dead has three weeks more to live. new wasps will continue to hatch and you may be left wondering why you keep finding half dead wasps in the house. Removal is the best policy.

Another reason for inspecting the attic is that in the the event of the nest being near your water storage tank, you may have had wasps straying into the water and drowning, with the result that rotting wasp bodies foul the water supply. We have found that the greater majority of tanks are left open and uncovered. This is the water in which you bathe and brush your teeth.

The standard professional wasp nest treatment. An increasingly common solution for killing wasp nests is to apply an insecticidal dust to the wasp entry/exit point with the use of a dust stick. The entry is most often a small hole in your fascia. A dust stick is a long lance which allows the operator to apply the chemicals from a 
distance.

We do not use dust sticks. We find it better to inject the chemicals directly into the hole or cavity that the wasps are using, this ensures a better treatment.

____________________________

Unfortunately, wasp nests located in flat roofs, attic corners and under floor areas cannot normally be removed. These nests, by their location, are out of reach and in any case dying wasps are unlikely to pose a problem. You could of course take the option of leaving them alone and wait untill November by which time they'll have completed their life cycle. You can then seal up the hole that attracted the attention of your queen wasp 7 months earlier.

Remember, wasps are beneficial insects and can be left in peace if the location of the nest is out of the way and you're quite sure they're not bothering anyone. 


 This picture shows the enterance to a wasps nest in a flat roof extension. The wasps enter through a crack and walk to the nest which should be within a metre distance. A roof in bad repair like this invites queen wasps to investigate the roof space. If you don't want wasps nesting in your home try to not attract them in the first place- NO HOLES-NO WASPS. Whether or not you have flowers in your garden has no bearing on the matter - they just need somewhere dry and dark to make their home.