How To Get Rid Of A Wasps’ Nest by Ken Chadwick
Stockport Wasps' Nest 2007
How To Get Rid Of A Wasps’ Nest – The 2009 wasp season is almost with us once more, what would summer be without our old friends the wasps to annoy us as we enjoy our summer evening barbeques?
The biology of the wasp means they are rarely seen much sooner than July as until then only the wasp queen is in the nest.
In late March or early April the over-wintered queens leave their hibernating sites to seek nesting places which could be in a hole in the ground, a bush or artificial structures such as chimneys eaves, lofts and attics, garden sheds etc.
The queen starts to construct her nest with a papery material that she makes by chewing small pieces of wood mixed with saliva; this is known as Wasp paper.
She will raise the first few workers by her own efforts and those workers will then continue the enlargement of the nest and caring for the immature Wasps to follow.
Nest construction gets into full swing in June and will reach its maximum in size in September, when 5 – 30,000 workers may be in the nest. These workers will forage for food up to 400 metres from the nest. The size of wasps’ nests will vary from year to year, the severity of the previous winter is probably the key factor.
In the Autumn the young queens mate and leave the nest to hibernate, the rest of the nest dies out and the nest is never reused.
Many People react differently to being stung by wasps; some are hardly affected, while others suffer considerable pain and swelling and a few become seriously allergic to being stung, which in rare cases results in sudden death due to anaphylactic shock.
Control
It is advisable to let a professional Pest Control Officer deal with a Wasps’ nest for the reasons mentioned above. An insecticide will be injected into the entrance to the nest. Returning wasps will carry the insecticide into the centre of the nest and within a short time all wasps should be dead.
It is not a good idea to allow a wasps’ nest to remain untreated as the new queens produced by the nest will invariably nest nearby in the following spring resulting in many more nests the following year. For this reason several nests are often found close together in a neighbourhood a locality.
That concludes this article entitled – How To Get Rid Of A Wasps’ Nest