7 ms·

Wasp Blower

104 points by bookofjoe 1y ago

stanac 1y ago
Reminds me of something similar I saw a few days ago. https://old.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1o195z6/i_eliminated_hundreds_of_wasps_with_my_3d_printer/ https://old.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1o195z6/i_elimi...
xattt 1y ago
I had a wasp problem last year where they were going into the attic of my home. I did what I could with spray cans, but it wasn’t enough. I ended up calling an exterminator who used delta dust, which the wasps carry into the nest. It was a little pricey (~$150) but it was peace of mind from the other alternative, being able to do nothing. The exterminator came back for free a few days later to re-dust when there was little change in activity. The second go did the trick. I did look at a few options online before calling. One idea was to set up a vacuum trap with a shop vac (1). (1) https://woodgears.ca/misc/wasp_sucker.html https://woodgears.ca/misc/wasp_sucker.html
taneq 1y ago
I feel like this is more of a wasp sucker. Or even a wasp processor (in the same vein as 'food processor').
- taneq 1y ago
  El Chupavispa, if you will. :D
sumo89 1y ago
More like "Wasp Wood Chipper"
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
This summer, we had a white-faced hornet nest, in a bush, a few feet from our front door, so it had to go. Normally, hornets are great. They are nowhere near as aggressive as yellowjackets (unless you mess with the nest), and they eat yellowjackets, so you either have hornets or yellowjackets, but not both (but they also eat bees, so people who want to encourage pollinators, need to discourage them). But that low on the ground, and that close to the house, they had to go. I have heard too many horror stories about botched hornet removal, so I called in a pro. I have a friend in the business, so I got a break (but that was $150). It was interesting, watching him do it. Took about 15 minutes. He had a special suit. It looked flimsy, but they couldn’t get through.
- Tepix 1y ago
  Why didn't he just move it to another place? Hornets are a threatened species.
  - the_sleaze_ 1y ago
    Which hornets are threatened? The only hornets news I hear is that they're invasive and killing pollinators.
    - hocuspocus 1y ago
      European hornets are protected in several European countries. The low population is also a reason we have too many wasps. That said even though they're not particularly aggressive, I don't know anyone who would just leave a nest on their property.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
        I think that some southern US households like to encourage them, as long as they aren't in an area where humans can disturb them. They kill all kinds of nasty bugs, and are pretty standoffish (as long as you don't get near the nest). Piss them off, however, and your life will experience whole new vistas of pain.
        hocuspocus 1y ago
        Right, by European standards even if you live in a detached house with a backyard, any location is probably going to be too close, as you probably don't want to be bothered when you eat outside or have people over for a barbecue. Obviously if you live on a farm, it might be different, especially if you have fruit trees, which should keep them busy.
        ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
        Around here, they usually set up, high in a tree. You often can’t see the nest, until fall. Yellowjackets, on the other hand, dig holes; often quite near houses. They are also quite aggressive. You can easily disturb their nests. Also, I don’t think hornet stings are as venomous as yellowjacket stings (they probably don’t need to be). Being swarmed by yellowjackets really sucks. I’d pick hornets over yellowjackets, any day.
comrade1234 1y ago
I was at my cabin in the fall - it was after Covid and the first time I was there in a couple of years. I got a nice fire going in the fireplace and maybe thirty minutes later I saw a wasp flying very poorly and slowly around the living room. Then a few more and a few more. I figure they must have built a nest in the attic during Covid, and were in hibernation for the winter but the warmth woke them up. So that night and the next few I had a roaring fire and let it get cold during the day. I really didn't want to go into the attic to investigate. Eventually there were no more wasps. Problem solved!
LtdJorge 1y ago
For people that don’t know, regular wasps always leave in the face of danger to the nest. If you have the typical small nest, the easiest thing you can do is hit it fast with a broom or similar. They will all disappear in seconds. I’ve seen my dad do it a lot of times with his bare hands, never got stung. But if you pass by the nest enough times, you’ll be. Another good solution is fire. A blow torch with a wide flame, burns their wings (if it doesn’t outright kill them) and also their nest, which is more or less made of paper.
- comrade1234 1y ago
  lol. I had a neighbor burn his shed down that way. The fun (not sarcastic) of rural life.
  - LtdJorge 1y ago
    Well, yeah. You have to be careful. Here, houses are made of brick, and almost no one has a shed, YMMV.
    - IncreasePosts 1y ago
      Sorry, but no one has a shed? Where do you cook your meth? Please don't tell me the house.
      - LtdJorge 1y ago
        I know you’re joking, but where I live in Spain it’s very rare, we normally store tools in the basement garage. In the north, Galicia and Asturias, it’s much more frequent to have wooden sheds in the countryside.
- tmerc 1y ago
  Alternatively, if you like having your house not catch on fire... Soapy water is unreasonably effective. Water alone is not. The soap makes the water extra clingy and does a pretty rapid job of incapacitating insects. Then killing them. I've taken out individual wasps this way, but not a whole nest.
akarlsten 1y ago
We had a wasps nest last summer inside the wall under the eaves of our house, some kid from the exterminator's came with a long telescoping rod and puffed some kind of white powder into the opening. He explained that it was something like a slow-acting poison (or maybe like diatomaceous earth) that would cover the drones when they left or arrived at the nest and that it was enough for one of these drones to brush up against the queen to kill her. They swarmed around for a few hours then we never saw them again, so it apparently worked. This was after attempting to spray the opening with regular wasp spray a few times. Sure, it killed a dozen or so drones each time but never really put a dent in the population.
- exasperaited 1y ago
  A good spray picking off the very earliest dozen or so wasps in the early spring may actually directly get the queen, who has not always permanently settled in. That point or the next few weeks is an excellent opportunity to add secondary toxins that the workers will carry in, because the nest is so small they will encounter the queen. Beyond that I guess only completely saturating an internal trunk route through the thing with a tool like that is going to work!
exasperaited 1y ago
Vigilance and attentiveness is definitely better here; early in the year you are looking for a handful of wasps spending more time near any one part of the facade of your house than normal. Pick a warm day in mid-spring, go round the property and note where wasps are going. You can safely use a spray to pick them off late in the evening, and if you get there early enough, depending on the species, one of those wasps could actually be the queen, because she may still be leaving the nest in order to care for her earliest brood. If you don't get the queen, because the nest is so small, you may get enough toxin onto one of the early workers that they will bring it into contact with the queen. You then use an insecticide foam around the entrance to any hole you see wasps going into. You can lay it on pretty thick, more than once, and they will progressively poison the nest. You can do this a few days apart in the evening. Since the nest is still small you probably don't need to hit the nest, and you might as well leave it because then no other colony will use the space. You do need to saturate any pathway they take to it. Directly above a bedroom window that is impossible to see from the outside but can be deduced by a process of elimination, in the roof of my 210 year old house, is a tiny gap, which attracted a nest nine years ago. I used this method and while I think I might very well have got the queen directtly, activity around the nest stopped in about 48 hours, and while every year I see wasps investigate the hole, I am guessing corpses put them off. In the warm late spring of the pandemic I resprayed the hole, and sprayed a couple more, with what was left of the can, because I reasoned that it might be difficult to get a pest controller to deal with them; this proved to be a wise decision because nests established in several places nearby in that lovely hot summer that went untreated for far too long.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
- jonbiggums22 1y ago
  This is good advice but I find they can build a nest quite fast once they get going. I've found a golf ball sized nest built onto the inside of a garage door that I'd only opened that morning.
javier_e06 1y ago
I wish I had the was blower 3 months ago. Wasps nested in the space between my laundry room and the 2nd floor. The exit was a crack between the concrete blocks outside wall and the vinyl siding. They found an entrance into the house through the overhead light socket when a fool whose name shall not be mentioned duck-taped their regular exit route. A call to the pest-control and $400.00 USD later took care of it. They bore a tiny hole next to the exit and pumped lethal gas in it. The problem with the was blower in my case it it would have to be 8 ft attached to the wall.
falcor84 1y ago
I was more impressed when Emily the Engineer built an actual Wasp Launcher - https://youtu.be/mEn2kA0cAGw https://youtu.be/mEn2kA0cAGw
itintheory 1y ago
I had two yellowjacket nests in the wood siding of my house this summer. Several cans of foaming spray had no effect since it couldn't penetrate far enough inside. I found a random forum thread where someone suggested using Sevin insecticide powder on the openings. It took a week and a half of daily applications using a paintbrush, but it seemed to be effective. Less expensive than calling an exterminator, and I have most of the can of powder left for next time.
- taneq 1y ago
  Pro tip if you're trying to deal with any of these: Do it while it's cold. Do not (as I did the first time) gird your appendages in towels and other random shielding, then do it in the mid-afternoon when it's been warm for hours and they're prepped to go like fighter jets with warmed up engines. Get up first thing in the morning when it's crispy and you can just get a can of bug spray and coat each one as it comes out. Ethical? No. Effective? Yes. I believe those two might be at odds.
  - goda90 1y ago
    I do it at night. They sleep, and using a red headlamp I don't think I disturbed them too much. After I saw activity drop off, I used expanding foam to seal the hole.
hagbard_c 1y ago
I tend to use a shop vacuum to get rid of undesirable wasp nests. Fill the tank with a few litres of water so the victims have something to drown in, point the tube at the nest entry or whatever entry the wasps use and switch it on for an hour or so. As soon as there is some disturbance most of the resident wasps will exit the nest to defend it so you'll get the resident population in only a few minutes. Keep the vacuum in place for a while to catch those which were out and about. Once you've got (most of) the workers the nest will die out if left alone. If you can reach it you can knock it down and drown or burn it, if it is in a wall somewhere that is not an option. Don't forget to put water in the tank or you'll be met by a cloud of angry wasps when you open it.
- jagged-chisel 1y ago
  If you forget the water at first, you can always vacuum it in later
  - foobarian 1y ago
    I just waited a week.
- squeedles 1y ago
  I do this as well, but put in about an inch of water with a few drops of dish soap. Instant wasp kryptonite. I have a few extension tubes so I can just lean it up against the house and watch as they are sucked in coming in or out. It is absolutely hypnotizing. It won't kill an entire nest late in the season, but will knock down their numbers so that they aren't as prevalent.
  - tmerc 1y ago
    You _can_ kill the nest this late in the season with a vacuum. I just did it 2-3 weeks ago; got the queen and all. It took several weeks of vacuum of intermittent vacuuming but you can. I've done this twice using the same method.
xpe 1y ago
Unrelated to wasp eradication, but interesting, still: Three Valuable Peptides from Bee and Wasp Venoms for Therapeutic and Biotechnological Use: Melittin, Apamin and Mastoparan [1] BBC: Wasp venom 'a weapon against cancer' (2015) [2] [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8000949/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8000949/ [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-34115112 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-34115112
foobarian 1y ago
Similar story, had a nest in the walls of a bay window bump. Too far up the side to spray effectively, but they had one weakness: there was a clear entrance spot. So I duct taped a pool vacuum hose next to it and ran it into the garage attached to a shop vac. Left it running for a day, problem solved. It was fun listening to the "ka-thunk" sound when each insect got sucked in. I think for next time I'll make some kind of detector based on audio to count the kills.
- blincoln 1y ago
  I've used a shop vac as a first step, but if it's the only step, won't the queen survive and make more wasps? Unless you left it running for so long the queen starved to death, I mean. My current approach is to wait until after dark, then fill up the nest entrance with spray foam (while wearing a beekeeper suit, just to be safe). I don't think that would work for walls, though - they'd probably find another way out.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    In fact, that approach is explicitly warned against for walls. When they can't get out their former entrance, they will start to chew through the wall to make a new one - and there's no guarantee that new entrance will lead to the outside, rather than your living room.
    - foobarian 1y ago
      My problem was the nest was hard to reach, and I was afraid that even if spraying did manage to kill the wasps, I would be left with a gross wet decomposing mass in the wall causing rot and water damage. I still need to figure out how to remove the existing nest but I'll wait until it's vacant :-)
  - tmerc 1y ago
    My first time having yellow jackets in my wall, I sprayed poison in the entrance. They found a new way to leave the nest that was into my kitchen. That's when I stopped using poison.
f1shy 1y ago
Related video from M Wandel: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OM4Nku2qAiI&pp=ygUVTWF0dGhpYXMgd2FuZGVsIHdhc3Bz0gcJCQYKAYcqIYzv https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OM4Nku2qAiI&pp=ygUVTWF0dGhpYXM...
Skwid 1y ago
I see a lot of advice being given in these comments, and I find it a little alarming that my own preference hasn't got a mention. Just leave them be? I've had plenty of wasp nests in sheds, roof spaces, garages etc and never had a problem peacefully coexisting with them. Almost everyone I've spoken to about it shares this sentiment, and generally wouldn't do anything about it unless it was in an especially risky location. I get the impression most commenters here are from the US, whilst I live in the UK. Am I naive to the aggression of American wasps, or is it just more acceptable to kill creatures you find bothersome over there? Does anyone with experience both sides of the pond have any insight?
- unwind 1y ago
  If you have (young) kids, having active/plentiful wasps nearby might just not work. Wasps can be scary, especially to children who have been stung before, and they are super-impractical around kids eating/snacking, too. "Close your mouth and relax" just doesn't get through to a scared kid, in my experience. :|
- oidar 1y ago
  > Am I naive to the aggression of American wasps Yes. Yellow jackets are very aggressive. Having them live in or next to your house is just asking for an injury.
- blincoln 1y ago
  Maybe you have friendlier wasps in the UK, but the common ones in the US (yellowjackets, mud daubers, etc.) are generally very aggressive, and trying to coexist with them will end badly sooner or later. I'm vegetarian because of personal ethics. I safely capture and release spiders I find in the house. I use live traps for mice and rats, and release them in the woods. But most wasps here are on my "nip the problem in the bud" list, along with termites, Scotch Broom, and a few other things. I leave non-aggressive wasps, like Great Golden Diggers, alone.
  - knappa 1y ago
    I don't know, but I've never had trouble with mud daubers.
Vipsy 1y ago
It's amazing how much DIY problem-solving comes out of necessity. Always interesting to see the basic household tech getting repurposed in a creative ways.
debo_ 1y ago
Horror. The spiral birth factory, stepped terraces of the hatching cells, blind jaws of the unborn moving ceaselessly, the staged progress from egg to larva, near-wasp, wasp. In his mind's eye, a kind of time-lapse photography took place, revealing the thing as the biological equivalent of a machine gun, hideous in its perfection.
- aaronbrethorst 1y ago
  Neuromancer, in case anyone's curious. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7235994-horror-the-spiral-birth-factory-stepped-terraces-of-the-hatching https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7235994-horror-the-spiral-b... Great book.
ravedave5 1y ago
I just vacuumed up a bee hive that had taken residence in my siding. Just rigged up my shop vac at the entrance and left it on.
- harwoodr 1y ago
  Bees or yellowjacket wasps? The first are pretty much "live and let live" the second turn into aggressive starving balls of winged hate in the late summer and early fall. Bees make honey and pollinate - yellowjacket wasps may remove some pests from the environment, but otherwise bring pain and suffering to the unwary.
  - tmerc 1y ago
    If they have moved into the walls where you live, they need to be removed. Species is not important here.
genuineresponse 1y ago
Wasps in a high traffic area are definitely bad, but if the nest is somewhere not too in the way I'd encourage folks to leave it be. Wasps are predators, and they eat a lot of the bugs that damage gardens. Yes, they are also assholes, do you have to strike a balance, but they can be really beneficial. Obviously, if you've got young kids around or the wasps are being aggressive, take care of the humans first, but understanding them a bit can really reduce the conflict with them.
- opwieurposiu 1y ago
  When we were kids we used to catch wasps in a plastic cup, put them in the freezer until they were anesthetized, and then tie a little leash on them with sewing thread. Then you chase your friends around the neighborhood with your personal attack wasp. Good times.
  - chandureddyvari 1y ago
    Slightly tangential but this was a learning moment for me. This reminds me of a story where Sage Mandavya established the first juvenile law in Hindu mythology. <story starts> Long ago, there lived a great sage named Mandavya who had taken a vow of silence and spent his days in deep meditation. One day, while he sat motionless beneath a tree with his arms raised in penance, a group of thieves being pursued by the king’s soldiers fled into his hermitage. They hid their stolen loot near the sage and escaped through the other side. When the king’s soldiers arrived, they found the stolen goods but the sage—deep in meditation and bound by his vow of silence—neither confirmed nor denied their presence. The soldiers arrested him and brought him before the king, accusing him of harboring criminals. Despite his spiritual stature, the king ordered a severe punishment: Mandavya was to be impaled on a stake (shula)—a horrific execution where a wooden spike was driven through the body. However, due to his immense yogic powers and detachment from the physical world, the sage did not die. He remained alive on the stake, enduring the agony with superhuman patience. Eventually, other sages intervened, the king realized his grave error, and Mandavya was freed. But the damage was done. When the sage finally left his mortal body, he went directly to Yamaloka—the realm of Yama, the god of death and justice—to demand an explanation. “Why did I have to suffer such a gruesome fate?” Sage Mandavya asked Lord Yama. “What terrible sin did I commit to deserve impalement?” Yama consulted his records and replied, “When you were a child, you caught a dragonfly and pierced it with a needle through its body, watching it suffer for your amusement. That act of cruelty resulted in your punishment - you experienced the same suffering you inflicted on that innocent creature.” Sage Mandavya was furious. “That was when I was a child!” he protested. “I was too young to understand the difference between right and wrong, between sin and virtue. How can you punish an ignorant child with the same severity as a knowing adult?” Yama tried to explain that karma operates impartially, but Mandavya would not accept this. In his righteous anger, the sage cursed Yama himself: “For this unjust judgment, you shall be born as a human on Earth and experience mortality yourself!” This curse led to Yama being born as Vidura, the wise and virtuous counselor in the Mahabharata - a human who, despite his wisdom and righteousness, had to endure the limitations and sufferings of mortal life. But Mandavya didn’t stop there. Using his spiritual authority, he proclaimed a new divine law: “No sin committed by a child below the age of fourteen shall count toward their karmic debt equivalent to that of an adult. Children who do not yet understand dharma and adharma shall not be punished for their ignorant actions.” This became the first “juvenile law” in Hindu mythology—a recognition that children, in their innocence and ignorance, deserve compassion and correction rather than severe punishment. <story ends> When I was a child, I too wanted to catch a dragonfly and tie a thread to it so it would fly around like a little pet. But my mother stopped me. She told me this very story of Sage Mandavya, and it scared me for life. I never forgot it, and I never tried to catch and bind a dragonfly again.
doodlebugging 1y ago
I have lots of paper wasps and red wasps nesting around my house and on the inside and outside of several outbuildings. They do a great job managing the fly population around here. If you have a problem with wasps trying to nest under porches at your exterior doors you should paint the underside of the porches sky blue. This will discourage nesting by making the wasps feel like the site is exposed to the weather.
SoftTalker 1y ago
If you have a nest in the ground you can fill it with CO2 gas at the entrance hole in the evening when they are resting. The gas will sink into the nest and leave no toxic residue. Trick might be finding the CO2, you can normally rent a tank at a welding supply shop. You'll also need a pressure regulator and hose. Dry ice can also be used, put some in a soda bottle with water and a hose taped up or snug fit to the top. Do not allow the bottle to pressurize however. Some people have reported using car exhaust but I'm not sure that's as effective.
move-on-by 1y ago
I haven't seen my successful method mentioned yet, so I’ll share. I had a ground nest, but it was built into a rock wall for a raised flower bed. They had several exit points. Despite emptying multiple of those spray cans, it was a healthy hive. Feeling discouraged, I dumped a bunch of fire ant powder all over the rocks. I did it at night, hoping they were all in there. I checked on them the next day and they were gone. I have no idea if it killed them or they decided it wasn’t a good home location anymore and left. Either way, no more yellow jackets.
EvanAnderson 1y ago
The house we bought last year "came with" cicada killer wasps[0]. They are impressive insects. The ones show in the Wikipedia article are a little smaller than the ones we have! I'd never heard of these things before getting this house. They are somewhat destructive in their nesting. We ended up having to kill a few when they were excavating the bedding sand between the flagstones surrounding the house. They could dig out a pile of sand standing 4 - 5 inches tall in about 30 minutes (leaving a hole about an inch in diameter right in the middle of the pile). They don't sting and are scared of humans. When they're unladen they fly very quickly and are quite agile. When they're laden with a cicada they bumble through the air in a most amusing way. They are also persistent-as-heck when it comes to their nesting behavior. I wish I could do something like this wasp blower to gently suggest these guys nest in the yard instead of between the flagstones. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphecius_speciosus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphecius_speciosus
linsomniac 1y ago
I've found if you have wasps nesting somewhere that there is an entrance or a sheltered place for them to build their nest, it's best to cover or fill the entrance if possible. Caulking or Great Stuff foam is a great choice here. Any cracks or holes they use to get behind siding or the like, for example. We had persistent nest problems in an underhang of our Little Free Library, which is a terrible place for a wasp nest, and I filled that gap with great stuff. We have paper wasps predominantly around here, and they will tend to nest in secluded areas, often voids or overhangs. I built my shed specifically to limit the ability for wasps to have a great place to make home.
junon 1y ago
Whatever is being used for what I assume is AC mains voltage with heavy load amperage does NOT look cut out for the job. It's screaming fire hazard to my eyes.
YeGoblynQueenne 1y ago
We had a big hornet problem one year at my friend's place. Hornets made their nest outside the kitchen and would enter every time we opened the door and fly around the house. Big, fat hornets with a powerful sting that you really didn't want flying around you, or landing on chairs and tables. Me and my friend's father tried to fight off the wasps by killing them. I crushed them with a fly swatter and the father sprayed them at close quarters with a bottle of Raid. My friend would instead turn off the lights in the kitchen and turn on the ones nearer the door, then turn on the lights outside, so the wasps would naturally follow the light and find their way out. Me and my friend's dad killed the wasps, my friend guided them to the light and got rid of them without murder. Also, my friend was once stung by one of those wasps, while I never was. I don't know about the father. I've often thought that if me and my friend were prehistoric people, I'd be like the stereotypical brutish primitive hominid going around bonking everything on the head with a bludgeon while my friend would like, figure out how to make leather out of animal hides or invent pottery or arithmetic or something. P.S. Suffice it to say, I've never killed a hornet since, or any other insect on purpose. I only kill mosquitoes on purpose and that only after a long time that I tried not to.

104 points by bookofjoe 1y ago

Reminds me of something similar I saw a few days ago. https://old.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1o195z6/i_eliminated_hundreds_of_wasps_with_my_3d_printer/ https://old.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1o195z6/i_elimi...

xattt 1y ago

I had a wasp problem last year where they were going into the attic of my home. I did what I could with spray cans, but it wasn’t enough. I ended up calling an exterminator who used delta dust, which the wasps carry into the nest. It was a little pricey (~$150) but it was peace of mind from the other alternative, being able to do nothing. The exterminator came back for free a few days later to re-dust when there was little change in activity. The second go did the trick. I did look at a few options online before calling. One idea was to set up a vacuum trap with a shop vac (1). (1) https://woodgears.ca/misc/wasp_sucker.html https://woodgears.ca/misc/wasp_sucker.html

taneq 1y ago

I feel like this is more of a wasp sucker. Or even a wasp processor (in the same vein as 'food processor').

taneq 1y ago
El Chupavispa, if you will. :D

sumo89 1y ago

More like "Wasp Wood Chipper"

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

This summer, we had a white-faced hornet nest, in a bush, a few feet from our front door, so it had to go. Normally, hornets are great. They are nowhere near as aggressive as yellowjackets (unless you mess with the nest), and they eat yellowjackets, so you either have hornets or yellowjackets, but not both (but they also eat bees, so people who want to encourage pollinators, need to discourage them). But that low on the ground, and that close to the house, they had to go. I have heard too many horror stories about botched hornet removal, so I called in a pro. I have a friend in the business, so I got a break (but that was $150). It was interesting, watching him do it. Took about 15 minutes. He had a special suit. It looked flimsy, but they couldn’t get through.

Tepix 1y ago
Why didn't he just move it to another place? Hornets are a threatened species.
- the_sleaze_ 1y ago
  Which hornets are threatened? The only hornets news I hear is that they're invasive and killing pollinators.
  - hocuspocus 1y ago
    European hornets are protected in several European countries. The low population is also a reason we have too many wasps. That said even though they're not particularly aggressive, I don't know anyone who would just leave a nest on their property.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      I think that some southern US households like to encourage them, as long as they aren't in an area where humans can disturb them. They kill all kinds of nasty bugs, and are pretty standoffish (as long as you don't get near the nest). Piss them off, however, and your life will experience whole new vistas of pain.
      - hocuspocus 1y ago
        Right, by European standards even if you live in a detached house with a backyard, any location is probably going to be too close, as you probably don't want to be bothered when you eat outside or have people over for a barbecue. Obviously if you live on a farm, it might be different, especially if you have fruit trees, which should keep them busy.
        ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
        Around here, they usually set up, high in a tree. You often can’t see the nest, until fall. Yellowjackets, on the other hand, dig holes; often quite near houses. They are also quite aggressive. You can easily disturb their nests. Also, I don’t think hornet stings are as venomous as yellowjacket stings (they probably don’t need to be). Being swarmed by yellowjackets really sucks. I’d pick hornets over yellowjackets, any day.

comrade1234 1y ago

I was at my cabin in the fall - it was after Covid and the first time I was there in a couple of years. I got a nice fire going in the fireplace and maybe thirty minutes later I saw a wasp flying very poorly and slowly around the living room. Then a few more and a few more. I figure they must have built a nest in the attic during Covid, and were in hibernation for the winter but the warmth woke them up. So that night and the next few I had a roaring fire and let it get cold during the day. I really didn't want to go into the attic to investigate. Eventually there were no more wasps. Problem solved!

LtdJorge 1y ago

For people that don’t know, regular wasps always leave in the face of danger to the nest. If you have the typical small nest, the easiest thing you can do is hit it fast with a broom or similar. They will all disappear in seconds. I’ve seen my dad do it a lot of times with his bare hands, never got stung. But if you pass by the nest enough times, you’ll be. Another good solution is fire. A blow torch with a wide flame, burns their wings (if it doesn’t outright kill them) and also their nest, which is more or less made of paper.

comrade1234 1y ago
lol. I had a neighbor burn his shed down that way. The fun (not sarcastic) of rural life.
- LtdJorge 1y ago
  Well, yeah. You have to be careful. Here, houses are made of brick, and almost no one has a shed, YMMV.
  - IncreasePosts 1y ago
    Sorry, but no one has a shed? Where do you cook your meth? Please don't tell me the house.
    - LtdJorge 1y ago
      I know you’re joking, but where I live in Spain it’s very rare, we normally store tools in the basement garage. In the north, Galicia and Asturias, it’s much more frequent to have wooden sheds in the countryside.
tmerc 1y ago
Alternatively, if you like having your house not catch on fire... Soapy water is unreasonably effective. Water alone is not. The soap makes the water extra clingy and does a pretty rapid job of incapacitating insects. Then killing them. I've taken out individual wasps this way, but not a whole nest.

akarlsten 1y ago

We had a wasps nest last summer inside the wall under the eaves of our house, some kid from the exterminator's came with a long telescoping rod and puffed some kind of white powder into the opening. He explained that it was something like a slow-acting poison (or maybe like diatomaceous earth) that would cover the drones when they left or arrived at the nest and that it was enough for one of these drones to brush up against the queen to kill her. They swarmed around for a few hours then we never saw them again, so it apparently worked. This was after attempting to spray the opening with regular wasp spray a few times. Sure, it killed a dozen or so drones each time but never really put a dent in the population.

exasperaited 1y ago
A good spray picking off the very earliest dozen or so wasps in the early spring may actually directly get the queen, who has not always permanently settled in. That point or the next few weeks is an excellent opportunity to add secondary toxins that the workers will carry in, because the nest is so small they will encounter the queen. Beyond that I guess only completely saturating an internal trunk route through the thing with a tool like that is going to work!

exasperaited 1y ago

Vigilance and attentiveness is definitely better here; early in the year you are looking for a handful of wasps spending more time near any one part of the facade of your house than normal. Pick a warm day in mid-spring, go round the property and note where wasps are going. You can safely use a spray to pick them off late in the evening, and if you get there early enough, depending on the species, one of those wasps could actually be the queen, because she may still be leaving the nest in order to care for her earliest brood. If you don't get the queen, because the nest is so small, you may get enough toxin onto one of the early workers that they will bring it into contact with the queen. You then use an insecticide foam around the entrance to any hole you see wasps going into. You can lay it on pretty thick, more than once, and they will progressively poison the nest. You can do this a few days apart in the evening. Since the nest is still small you probably don't need to hit the nest, and you might as well leave it because then no other colony will use the space. You do need to saturate any pathway they take to it. Directly above a bedroom window that is impossible to see from the outside but can be deduced by a process of elimination, in the roof of my 210 year old house, is a tiny gap, which attracted a nest nine years ago. I used this method and while I think I might very well have got the queen directtly, activity around the nest stopped in about 48 hours, and while every year I see wasps investigate the hole, I am guessing corpses put them off. In the warm late spring of the pandemic I resprayed the hole, and sprayed a couple more, with what was left of the can, because I reasoned that it might be difficult to get a pest controller to deal with them; this proved to be a wise decision because nests established in several places nearby in that lovely hot summer that went untreated for far too long.

cindyllm 1y ago
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jonbiggums22 1y ago
This is good advice but I find they can build a nest quite fast once they get going. I've found a golf ball sized nest built onto the inside of a garage door that I'd only opened that morning.

javier_e06 1y ago

I wish I had the was blower 3 months ago. Wasps nested in the space between my laundry room and the 2nd floor. The exit was a crack between the concrete blocks outside wall and the vinyl siding. They found an entrance into the house through the overhead light socket when a fool whose name shall not be mentioned duck-taped their regular exit route. A call to the pest-control and $400.00 USD later took care of it. They bore a tiny hole next to the exit and pumped lethal gas in it. The problem with the was blower in my case it it would have to be 8 ft attached to the wall.

falcor84 1y ago

I was more impressed when Emily the Engineer built an actual Wasp Launcher - https://youtu.be/mEn2kA0cAGw https://youtu.be/mEn2kA0cAGw

itintheory 1y ago

I had two yellowjacket nests in the wood siding of my house this summer. Several cans of foaming spray had no effect since it couldn't penetrate far enough inside. I found a random forum thread where someone suggested using Sevin insecticide powder on the openings. It took a week and a half of daily applications using a paintbrush, but it seemed to be effective. Less expensive than calling an exterminator, and I have most of the can of powder left for next time.

taneq 1y ago
Pro tip if you're trying to deal with any of these: Do it while it's cold. Do not (as I did the first time) gird your appendages in towels and other random shielding, then do it in the mid-afternoon when it's been warm for hours and they're prepped to go like fighter jets with warmed up engines. Get up first thing in the morning when it's crispy and you can just get a can of bug spray and coat each one as it comes out. Ethical? No. Effective? Yes. I believe those two might be at odds.
- goda90 1y ago
  I do it at night. They sleep, and using a red headlamp I don't think I disturbed them too much. After I saw activity drop off, I used expanding foam to seal the hole.

hagbard_c 1y ago

I tend to use a shop vacuum to get rid of undesirable wasp nests. Fill the tank with a few litres of water so the victims have something to drown in, point the tube at the nest entry or whatever entry the wasps use and switch it on for an hour or so. As soon as there is some disturbance most of the resident wasps will exit the nest to defend it so you'll get the resident population in only a few minutes. Keep the vacuum in place for a while to catch those which were out and about. Once you've got (most of) the workers the nest will die out if left alone. If you can reach it you can knock it down and drown or burn it, if it is in a wall somewhere that is not an option. Don't forget to put water in the tank or you'll be met by a cloud of angry wasps when you open it.

jagged-chisel 1y ago
If you forget the water at first, you can always vacuum it in later
- foobarian 1y ago
  I just waited a week.
squeedles 1y ago
I do this as well, but put in about an inch of water with a few drops of dish soap. Instant wasp kryptonite. I have a few extension tubes so I can just lean it up against the house and watch as they are sucked in coming in or out. It is absolutely hypnotizing. It won't kill an entire nest late in the season, but will knock down their numbers so that they aren't as prevalent.
- tmerc 1y ago
  You _can_ kill the nest this late in the season with a vacuum. I just did it 2-3 weeks ago; got the queen and all. It took several weeks of vacuum of intermittent vacuuming but you can. I've done this twice using the same method.

xpe 1y ago

Unrelated to wasp eradication, but interesting, still: Three Valuable Peptides from Bee and Wasp Venoms for Therapeutic and Biotechnological Use: Melittin, Apamin and Mastoparan [1] BBC: Wasp venom 'a weapon against cancer' (2015) [2] [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8000949/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8000949/ [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-34115112 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-34115112

foobarian 1y ago

Similar story, had a nest in the walls of a bay window bump. Too far up the side to spray effectively, but they had one weakness: there was a clear entrance spot. So I duct taped a pool vacuum hose next to it and ran it into the garage attached to a shop vac. Left it running for a day, problem solved. It was fun listening to the "ka-thunk" sound when each insect got sucked in. I think for next time I'll make some kind of detector based on audio to count the kills.

blincoln 1y ago
I've used a shop vac as a first step, but if it's the only step, won't the queen survive and make more wasps? Unless you left it running for so long the queen starved to death, I mean. My current approach is to wait until after dark, then fill up the nest entrance with spray foam (while wearing a beekeeper suit, just to be safe). I don't think that would work for walls, though - they'd probably find another way out.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  In fact, that approach is explicitly warned against for walls. When they can't get out their former entrance, they will start to chew through the wall to make a new one - and there's no guarantee that new entrance will lead to the outside, rather than your living room.
  - foobarian 1y ago
    My problem was the nest was hard to reach, and I was afraid that even if spraying did manage to kill the wasps, I would be left with a gross wet decomposing mass in the wall causing rot and water damage. I still need to figure out how to remove the existing nest but I'll wait until it's vacant :-)
- tmerc 1y ago
  My first time having yellow jackets in my wall, I sprayed poison in the entrance. They found a new way to leave the nest that was into my kitchen. That's when I stopped using poison.

f1shy 1y ago

Related video from M Wandel: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OM4Nku2qAiI&pp=ygUVTWF0dGhpYXMgd2FuZGVsIHdhc3Bz0gcJCQYKAYcqIYzv https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OM4Nku2qAiI&pp=ygUVTWF0dGhpYXM...

Skwid 1y ago

I see a lot of advice being given in these comments, and I find it a little alarming that my own preference hasn't got a mention. Just leave them be? I've had plenty of wasp nests in sheds, roof spaces, garages etc and never had a problem peacefully coexisting with them. Almost everyone I've spoken to about it shares this sentiment, and generally wouldn't do anything about it unless it was in an especially risky location. I get the impression most commenters here are from the US, whilst I live in the UK. Am I naive to the aggression of American wasps, or is it just more acceptable to kill creatures you find bothersome over there? Does anyone with experience both sides of the pond have any insight?

unwind 1y ago
If you have (young) kids, having active/plentiful wasps nearby might just not work. Wasps can be scary, especially to children who have been stung before, and they are super-impractical around kids eating/snacking, too. "Close your mouth and relax" just doesn't get through to a scared kid, in my experience. :|
oidar 1y ago
> Am I naive to the aggression of American wasps Yes. Yellow jackets are very aggressive. Having them live in or next to your house is just asking for an injury.
blincoln 1y ago
Maybe you have friendlier wasps in the UK, but the common ones in the US (yellowjackets, mud daubers, etc.) are generally very aggressive, and trying to coexist with them will end badly sooner or later. I'm vegetarian because of personal ethics. I safely capture and release spiders I find in the house. I use live traps for mice and rats, and release them in the woods. But most wasps here are on my "nip the problem in the bud" list, along with termites, Scotch Broom, and a few other things. I leave non-aggressive wasps, like Great Golden Diggers, alone.
- knappa 1y ago
  I don't know, but I've never had trouble with mud daubers.

Vipsy 1y ago

It's amazing how much DIY problem-solving comes out of necessity. Always interesting to see the basic household tech getting repurposed in a creative ways.

debo_ 1y ago

Horror. The spiral birth factory, stepped terraces of the hatching cells, blind jaws of the unborn moving ceaselessly, the staged progress from egg to larva, near-wasp, wasp. In his mind's eye, a kind of time-lapse photography took place, revealing the thing as the biological equivalent of a machine gun, hideous in its perfection.

aaronbrethorst 1y ago
Neuromancer, in case anyone's curious. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7235994-horror-the-spiral-birth-factory-stepped-terraces-of-the-hatching https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7235994-horror-the-spiral-b... Great book.

ravedave5 1y ago

I just vacuumed up a bee hive that had taken residence in my siding. Just rigged up my shop vac at the entrance and left it on.

harwoodr 1y ago
Bees or yellowjacket wasps? The first are pretty much "live and let live" the second turn into aggressive starving balls of winged hate in the late summer and early fall. Bees make honey and pollinate - yellowjacket wasps may remove some pests from the environment, but otherwise bring pain and suffering to the unwary.
- tmerc 1y ago
  If they have moved into the walls where you live, they need to be removed. Species is not important here.

genuineresponse 1y ago

Wasps in a high traffic area are definitely bad, but if the nest is somewhere not too in the way I'd encourage folks to leave it be. Wasps are predators, and they eat a lot of the bugs that damage gardens. Yes, they are also assholes, do you have to strike a balance, but they can be really beneficial. Obviously, if you've got young kids around or the wasps are being aggressive, take care of the humans first, but understanding them a bit can really reduce the conflict with them.

opwieurposiu 1y ago
When we were kids we used to catch wasps in a plastic cup, put them in the freezer until they were anesthetized, and then tie a little leash on them with sewing thread. Then you chase your friends around the neighborhood with your personal attack wasp. Good times.
- chandureddyvari 1y ago
  Slightly tangential but this was a learning moment for me. This reminds me of a story where Sage Mandavya established the first juvenile law in Hindu mythology. <story starts> Long ago, there lived a great sage named Mandavya who had taken a vow of silence and spent his days in deep meditation. One day, while he sat motionless beneath a tree with his arms raised in penance, a group of thieves being pursued by the king’s soldiers fled into his hermitage. They hid their stolen loot near the sage and escaped through the other side. When the king’s soldiers arrived, they found the stolen goods but the sage—deep in meditation and bound by his vow of silence—neither confirmed nor denied their presence. The soldiers arrested him and brought him before the king, accusing him of harboring criminals. Despite his spiritual stature, the king ordered a severe punishment: Mandavya was to be impaled on a stake (shula)—a horrific execution where a wooden spike was driven through the body. However, due to his immense yogic powers and detachment from the physical world, the sage did not die. He remained alive on the stake, enduring the agony with superhuman patience. Eventually, other sages intervened, the king realized his grave error, and Mandavya was freed. But the damage was done. When the sage finally left his mortal body, he went directly to Yamaloka—the realm of Yama, the god of death and justice—to demand an explanation. “Why did I have to suffer such a gruesome fate?” Sage Mandavya asked Lord Yama. “What terrible sin did I commit to deserve impalement?” Yama consulted his records and replied, “When you were a child, you caught a dragonfly and pierced it with a needle through its body, watching it suffer for your amusement. That act of cruelty resulted in your punishment - you experienced the same suffering you inflicted on that innocent creature.” Sage Mandavya was furious. “That was when I was a child!” he protested. “I was too young to understand the difference between right and wrong, between sin and virtue. How can you punish an ignorant child with the same severity as a knowing adult?” Yama tried to explain that karma operates impartially, but Mandavya would not accept this. In his righteous anger, the sage cursed Yama himself: “For this unjust judgment, you shall be born as a human on Earth and experience mortality yourself!” This curse led to Yama being born as Vidura, the wise and virtuous counselor in the Mahabharata - a human who, despite his wisdom and righteousness, had to endure the limitations and sufferings of mortal life. But Mandavya didn’t stop there. Using his spiritual authority, he proclaimed a new divine law: “No sin committed by a child below the age of fourteen shall count toward their karmic debt equivalent to that of an adult. Children who do not yet understand dharma and adharma shall not be punished for their ignorant actions.” This became the first “juvenile law” in Hindu mythology—a recognition that children, in their innocence and ignorance, deserve compassion and correction rather than severe punishment. <story ends> When I was a child, I too wanted to catch a dragonfly and tie a thread to it so it would fly around like a little pet. But my mother stopped me. She told me this very story of Sage Mandavya, and it scared me for life. I never forgot it, and I never tried to catch and bind a dragonfly again.

doodlebugging 1y ago

I have lots of paper wasps and red wasps nesting around my house and on the inside and outside of several outbuildings. They do a great job managing the fly population around here. If you have a problem with wasps trying to nest under porches at your exterior doors you should paint the underside of the porches sky blue. This will discourage nesting by making the wasps feel like the site is exposed to the weather.

SoftTalker 1y ago

If you have a nest in the ground you can fill it with CO2 gas at the entrance hole in the evening when they are resting. The gas will sink into the nest and leave no toxic residue. Trick might be finding the CO2, you can normally rent a tank at a welding supply shop. You'll also need a pressure regulator and hose. Dry ice can also be used, put some in a soda bottle with water and a hose taped up or snug fit to the top. Do not allow the bottle to pressurize however. Some people have reported using car exhaust but I'm not sure that's as effective.

move-on-by 1y ago

I haven't seen my successful method mentioned yet, so I’ll share. I had a ground nest, but it was built into a rock wall for a raised flower bed. They had several exit points. Despite emptying multiple of those spray cans, it was a healthy hive. Feeling discouraged, I dumped a bunch of fire ant powder all over the rocks. I did it at night, hoping they were all in there. I checked on them the next day and they were gone. I have no idea if it killed them or they decided it wasn’t a good home location anymore and left. Either way, no more yellow jackets.

EvanAnderson 1y ago

The house we bought last year "came with" cicada killer wasps[0]. They are impressive insects. The ones show in the Wikipedia article are a little smaller than the ones we have! I'd never heard of these things before getting this house. They are somewhat destructive in their nesting. We ended up having to kill a few when they were excavating the bedding sand between the flagstones surrounding the house. They could dig out a pile of sand standing 4 - 5 inches tall in about 30 minutes (leaving a hole about an inch in diameter right in the middle of the pile). They don't sting and are scared of humans. When they're unladen they fly very quickly and are quite agile. When they're laden with a cicada they bumble through the air in a most amusing way. They are also persistent-as-heck when it comes to their nesting behavior. I wish I could do something like this wasp blower to gently suggest these guys nest in the yard instead of between the flagstones. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphecius_speciosus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphecius_speciosus

linsomniac 1y ago

I've found if you have wasps nesting somewhere that there is an entrance or a sheltered place for them to build their nest, it's best to cover or fill the entrance if possible. Caulking or Great Stuff foam is a great choice here. Any cracks or holes they use to get behind siding or the like, for example. We had persistent nest problems in an underhang of our Little Free Library, which is a terrible place for a wasp nest, and I filled that gap with great stuff. We have paper wasps predominantly around here, and they will tend to nest in secluded areas, often voids or overhangs. I built my shed specifically to limit the ability for wasps to have a great place to make home.

junon 1y ago

Whatever is being used for what I assume is AC mains voltage with heavy load amperage does NOT look cut out for the job. It's screaming fire hazard to my eyes.

YeGoblynQueenne 1y ago

We had a big hornet problem one year at my friend's place. Hornets made their nest outside the kitchen and would enter every time we opened the door and fly around the house. Big, fat hornets with a powerful sting that you really didn't want flying around you, or landing on chairs and tables. Me and my friend's father tried to fight off the wasps by killing them. I crushed them with a fly swatter and the father sprayed them at close quarters with a bottle of Raid. My friend would instead turn off the lights in the kitchen and turn on the ones nearer the door, then turn on the lights outside, so the wasps would naturally follow the light and find their way out. Me and my friend's dad killed the wasps, my friend guided them to the light and got rid of them without murder. Also, my friend was once stung by one of those wasps, while I never was. I don't know about the father. I've often thought that if me and my friend were prehistoric people, I'd be like the stereotypical brutish primitive hominid going around bonking everything on the head with a bludgeon while my friend would like, figure out how to make leather out of animal hides or invent pottery or arithmetic or something. P.S. Suffice it to say, I've never killed a hornet since, or any other insect on purpose. I only kill mosquitoes on purpose and that only after a long time that I tried not to.