WASPS EVERYWHERE

[aart]

Best time to mount and 'attack', so to speak, is just before dawn when it's been chilly all night.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Bred wasp queens are now coming out of their winter hibernation. The wasps you see now are all looking for a site to start a new nest. Every wasp queen you kill now represents dozens if not thousands of worker wasps that you will not have to deal with in late summer.

But please please educate yourself on the difference between wasps and bees. They are not the same insect.

 

[annewandering]

Wasps are the ones that try to get in your drinks, into your humming bird feeders, have gray papery nests hanging under eaves, in stumps, under cars, etc. They are longer and skinnier. Please dont kill bees. We need them.

 

[CedarAcres]

I've noticed that there are way less bees on our property since we started having wasp issues. I wonder if the wasp population pushes out the bee population? I've never ever been stung by a bee in my life, but I've gotten lots of wasp stings. They absolutely love our greenhouse.. I can barely get near it! Which is super annoying since my plants need to get watered. We try to kill as many as we can. The annoying thing is they are swarming around during the day and won't let us get near certain areas of the yard, but completely disappear in the evening, so I'm guessing they have a home somewhere else.

 

[eleaf]

I've noticed that there are way less bees on our property since we started having wasp issues. I wonder if the wasp population pushes out the bee population? I've never ever been stung by a bee in my life, but I've gotten lots of wasp stings. They absolutely love our greenhouse.. I can barely get near it! Which is super annoying since my plants need to get watered. We try to kill as many as we can. The annoying thing is they are swarming around during the day and won't let us get near certain areas of the yard, but completely disappear in the evening, so I'm guessing they have a home somewhere else.

They won't have a home too far from where you see them, it's just that their home is hidden from sight.

 

[CrazyPetunias]

You may want to be careful if you don't know where their home is. We get both the paperwasps (nests in trees) and ground wasps around here. You can get really hurt if you step on a ground wasp home. There can be hundreds of the buggers in there and will attack if they feel threatened.

I usually leave the nests alone if I can because the wasps will eat other bugs including mosquitos. DH had to get rid of one ground nest a couple years back because it was really close to the kids playhouse. We went out after dark with 2 spray cans of wasp spray and a shovel and dug them up, smashed the nest and sprayed anything that moved. The nest was almost 2 feet wide and 6" deep

 

[OldGuy43]

Have a problem with them here, too. I use spray carburetor cleaner on the nests I can reach. It's controllable and low persistence. For the ones I can't easily reach I use a pressure sprayer.