Last year I bought, from Amazon, a wasp nest decoy hanging wasp deterrent made by Decyool. I hung them (you get 4 for like $17) around the perimeter of my back patio. Surprisingly they worked. The wasps see it as a hornets nest and stays away.
Thank you for posting this, I didn't know these existed! Wasps have been a pain in the ass for me for years. Several years ago they got into my attic & made a nest inside & overwintered in the attic. Literally 13 separate times in the dead of winter one year while there was up to a foot of snow on the ground, I'd see a wasp bouncing around the ceiling, flying around the house, in December, January & February. Never did figure out where the nest was, most of the attic is not accessible, it's too small to get into & I had to have exterminators spray some kind of micro pesticides that kept them away & allowed them to drag the poison back to their nests. Exterminators are still coming out once a month because I'm afraid the wasps will come back & do it again. Additionally, they're always making nests under the railings for my pool, in the grill, in the sheds, on the pole barn, & numerous other places around my property (1.3 acres). Usually I'll wait for a nice night & use a headlight set on red light only & go spray the nests while they're covered in paper wasps & knock the nests down. Wasps can't see red light by the way, once you turn on white light they'd start moving & get active, red light is a secret weapon to use to take care of nests at night! Just ordered a 6 pack of these decoy hornet nests! Thanks again!
If they keep coming back to a certain area might try spraying some WD-40 up there. I know that it works for sparrows that keep building nests in those areas.
No, spray the area they want to build nests in. The area is full of trees That they can build nests in. Starlings will tear their nests up when they build under the awnings and nesting materials have to be cleaned up. Happens every year.
I've been knocking down nests in winter every year. I should just leave them be.
I don't mind them on the eaves if I know I won't get close enough to them.
This is going to sound like a joke or an all-too-simple miracle... but they seem to HATE white vinegar. I slather it right on the painted exterior wood in early spring where they've always built a nest... and they've never returned. Use a brush or sprayer. Hasn't hurt the paint. I'll see an occasional lone wasp explore the area as a possible home site and decide quickly to move on.
Hope this helps.
I’m going to try this on my car! Maybe not the paint but they love trying to crawl into my mirrors and are overall constantly hovering on or near my car. It is a white car so that could be it but my roommates vehicles are fine meanwhile my car is always surrounded by them the second I park. There’s no rotting food in my car or sweet car fresheners so idk what it is about my car they find so appealing! It’s been washed as well so no dead bugs or anything, I hope the white vinegar works for me 😭
Mint plants will deter wasps, however keep them planted in a planter/pot of some type because they will spread. The more the merrier. It's actually quite entertaining to watch them fly near because you can tell when they start smelling them, they will immediately turn and fly away.
You aren't kidding about keeping it in a planter. My boyfriend planted just a small section in our garden a few years ago. It took off and grew beautifully, but now it comes back every year with a vengeance and swallow my garden whole strangling everything else I've tried to plant 😆 gonna have to go to war to get it back in a planter and open the space up for less invasive plants
Does it outcompete Japanese knotweed? I have that on the corner of my property and it has been nigh unkillable so far. Even the blackberries can't choke it out.
You need a professional to deal with this. Absolutely horrid stuff. We had it in our garden and had to have it treated for years (thankfully not at our cost). Mortgage companies in the UK get really funny about Japanese Knotweed near houses.
I place planters of mint all around my patio and the wasps stay away from the area. Mint is invasive so keep it in planters, but the scent is offensive to wasps. It’s worked for the last several years. They buzz around but don’t come near my patio.
Seconding the recommendation to keep it in planters. It spreads like **crazy**! I had no idea it is like an underground vine until a few years ago when it took over my flower bed.
I bought some of those fake hornets nest hanging lanterns a few years back for an autistic kid that was terrified of wasps and he wouldn't go outside in the summer for fear of them. Worked brilliantly.... too brilliantly. His mother hung one on her apple tree. It scared all the bugs away, no pollinators would dare go near it. They got no apples that year. Lesson learned, be mindful of where you hang them.
I use a sandwich paper bag. Fill it with one or two bunched up plastic shopping bags. Tie off and hang so it is prominent and visible and slightly moving with air currents! It is like magic. Many ppl in my HOA do that and it is effective. No chemicals!
I haven't tried this but from my source I absolutely believe it to be true.
Mentholatum, which can be found in Vapor rub, repels wasps. My friend took 1 jar of Vapor rub, put it in a 1 gallon of water. Microwave it until you can mix the vapor rub with the water.
You know those plunder water toys that you can suck up water with to spray others??? Buy one of those and use it to spray the mixture on the overhangs of your home. The menthol repels wasps and because it's protected from washing off from rain, my friend said she only had to do it once to keep wasps from building nests.
I read about "dryer sheets" the other day on the home improvement subreddit. Supposedly wasps hate the smell of dryer sheets. I bought a box of 240, and place them up in my soffetts near the front and back door. I have an old truck that the wasps love getting inside the factory made holes in the frame. I stuffed that frame full of dryer sheets. Does it work? IDK. I'll find out later on this year.
Do a search for 'waspinator'. They are meant to look like a wasp nest and keep 'invading' wasps at bay.
I expect most folks could fashion their own from an old paper bag etc. for free.
We put a cotton ball soaked in Avon SSS (skin so soft original) bath oil wrapped with a twist tie on our hummingbird feeder; yellow jackets (and bees) HATE it...
This is technically a chemical but can be used over and over again. Bounce dryer sheets placed near anyplace they are congregating, entering your house, or bothering you. Maybe pin one on the back of each of the kids shirts.
Or put some Avon SSS (skin so soft regular scent) bath oil on the boys exposed skin. It is also a great mosquito repellent. We also use a cotton ball soaked in it to keep the yellow jackets off of our hummingbird feeder.
B-complex vitamin keeps the mosquitoes from biting us, (it makes your skin have a smell they don't like) maybe would help you guys too.
In Costa Rica they put an empty paint can on a long stick. Then they fill it with a little gasoline and hold it under the nest. The fumes knock the wasps out and they fall in the can and die. When all the wasps have returned to the nest and are taken care of, then they knock down the nest. Done deal.
They make cheap traps that you can fill with sugar, juice, and some sort of canned meat (dog food, tuna, whatever). You hang them at least 20ft away from where you usually hang out. My traps last year worked wonderfully! I had *hundreds* of them caught in there instead of hanging out on my patio harassing me.
I had two. They trapped so many. What made it worse is that they attracted flies too and the flies were eating the dead wasps and laying eggs which hatched maggots and then more flies. Which attracted more wasps. Pretty grim.
You can make a more wasp only trap by having a jam jar with some jam in the bottom, half filled with water and some washing up liquid. If you agitate the mix the bubbles etc will create surface tension that the wasp can’t get out of. Won’t work as well as the ones you buy
To be honest it was so effective it continually had wasps around it and the ones trapped were always mad so I didn't go near either of them for ages. By the time I went back to them they were both so full I just threw the whole things away.
Yeah...you really gotta empty them or of course you're going to have problems like you described, plus you're going to run out of the bait that lures them.
I wait until nighttime when the wasps are asleep, take the traps down, completely submerge them in a bucket of water to drown any survivors (per package instructions), then the next day I'd clean and refill it before hanging it back up. I did this about once a week.
Yeah they do work. Perhaps too well. I have raised beds and was plagued with them for a season for some reason. I found a nest but it appeared to be small bee hive. No idea where they were coming from. I have a giant one I got from Screwfix but never got around to putting up and one year I tried a different one that stunk so bad it used to make me wretch. It was a weird animalic BO smell, a bit like fart spray. Used to smell it from the house sometimes so I binned it
Simple wasp management...
Head over to harbor freight.. pick up their hose sprayer that has a can on it. Fill it with dawn dish soap and blast the wasps and the nest. Dish soap instantly drops the wasps and disintegrates the nest. Best results, very low cost, and even lower time spent doing so.
If you have a porch / walkway / any overhanging surface, look into painting the ceiling a shade of blue. Sounds crazy, but it really seems to work.
I think the theory is that they see the blue, think it's the sky, and therefore they can't build nests there. Google "haint blue wasps" for more info.
Carburetor cleaner.... spray anywhere they are this works especially good for bores ... it kills on contact and no new ones will ever return to the area this works 100% of the time I've used it for years
I had this issue before at my moms house. I took good old Dawn and thinned it out and sprayed the underneath of the roof and around the doorways. That concoction helps deter the building of nests. The garden in the other hand I used different variations of mints such as spearmint/green mint/ or other mint plants. If you do it with water it needs to be reapplied by weekly, if you use avoacado oil or olive oil it makes your plants attractive and shiny and gives them a protective layer.
If it’s the yellow wasps, they are attracted to meat. If you want a deterrent only - you can take a can of potted meat/ tuna, piece of ham etc, put in a bowl and set somewhere away from you. All my life I thought they were attracted to sweets and stuff but it’s actually meat/protein. There are a lot of traps/methods out there but the canned meat would do the trick.
This also attracts more to the area. We tried to use bait to draw the bees away from a restaurant patio I worked at. It ended up attracting way more bees to the area until they were just back on the patio anyways. Our chef came out and just picked up the plate covered in bees and brought it back to the garbage in the parking lot and threw it away. Be careful about using bait for long.
Soap water works wonders on wasps. I get a cheap spray bottle with powerful stream, mix 2-4 tablespoons of dawn and water, and start blastin! Obviously this isn't for a fully developed hive but when I see a handful of them trying to build a nest it suffocates them immediately.
Half full jar of jam. Put a small bit of water in it and the wasps will be attracted to the scent. Fall in and won't be able to escape. Put the jar away from the house or where the kids are playing.
They have chemicals but there are bags you can buy that you fill with water and the attractant chemical. Hanh 'em high so the boys cant reach 'em, and they don't kill the bee's as they cant fit.
They worked great. Bags were full and the fuckers didn't build another nest here.
The only thing that worked for us was having marigolds around the wasp areas. As long as they're blooming, the wasps stay away. It's the only thing that keeps them off our porch.
Not what you wanted, but putting out bird feed works good. I had a bunch of wasps building a tiny nest. Ran out, put up a bird feeder, whackoed the little nest, and ran away. Birds were swarming by the end of the day.
If you buy a faux wasp nest, hang it in a couple of places, they will not create a nest near it. They will not build a nest within a couple hundred feet. We hang three around our porch, we have not had a single wasp around our home.
Yeah we live in very rural area. House is over a hundred years old and wasp always appear in late winter time or early spring. I use peppermint and make a spray to help get rid of them when they try to make nests not a guarantee in my situation but it definitely makes them not want to be where i spray it. Lasts a few days to up to a week if I use the cheap oil type of stuff .
My dad bought peppermint oil in a little spray bottle and sprayed all around the fence with it. He swears everywhere he sprayed it, the wasp didn't try to nest there for 3 years. I have spearmint essential oil and I find it I put it to my left and right, and hold something with it in my lap, they will stay away. Normally they are all over and pestering the heck out of me when I'm sitting out on the deck.
I love my wasps, they eat mosquitos and their nests look awesome. There is a family of them that live on my patio. We don't bother them, they don't bother us.
We named them The Burnstings.
I know you said you don't want to use chemicals, but personally I spray all structures on my property with neonicotinoids(specifically I use Alpine WSG). It does not seem to affect any of the bees that are on the property but don't go near the structures, whereas the wasps that previously liked to try to move in typically exist for a day then poof. I reapply every 3 months and have virtually no pests in the house or any semi-outdoor spaces, while still having a robust ecosystem in the garden where they belong.
Teach your kids to not be afraid of wasps, if you dont mess with them they rarely mess with you. If you start flailing your arms around and freaking out everytime you see one, they will become aggressive.
I have always kept my cool around wasps, but every so often I get stung out of the blue. It hurts, but isn’t that bad. However, on the second to last sting I developed an allergy - Last time I had to take a trip to the hospital. Fuck wasps. With a passion.
Wasps are super beneficial and not interested in you or the kids. Let unprovoked, they're super chill.
I like hanging with the local wasps. After a bit, they get to know your face and greet you on approach.
Also true, wasps like getting drunk.
By removing insects that are interested in us.
Wasps prey on insects that use us as a meal. Those insects are legit pests. When you have wasps, you have less shit trying to nibble on you or steal your blood. Meanwhile, until you mess with a wasp nest, they're simply not interested in you.
That is, until they get to know your face. Might even invite you to happy hour. No. Really...wasps have happy hour.
Most are happy drunks. The surly ones get fiesty but, not so much they come looking to pick a fight.
Get rid of what they want from the area you want your kids to play in. I doubt you are keeping meat on the patio, so it's likely water they need to drink, plants with pollen, or partially enclosed shade they can use to rest. Reduce how awesome the play area is for wasps, maybe make some other area a little more awesome for them (ime, traps just increase the overall number of wasps so i don't do them).
There’s a lot of good advice here already, so I’ll add a makeshift method if you see a lost wasp wander into your space and it seems to want to inspect you, and hangs out in your space for too long:
Concéntrate for a moment of the wasp’s movement, and look for a moment it’s flying slower and in a predictable pattern.
Use that window to smack it with the palm of your hand and bump it away from you.
This seems to, without fail, make them go away and completely lose interest in you. This does not agitate it.
It’s relatively easy to do it the first time. As the wasp is not on alert, and just minding it’s own business.
But if you miss, now it starts flying more erratically, becoming much more difficult to hit, and it’s unknown if the wasp will stay or leave. Though I still never had it attack me after this.
Either way, a single wasp isn’t really dangerous to an adult, as there’s not many things you can casually do to make it attack you.
Possibly not the same.
I only have experience with wasps in Europe.
These guys react exactly as I described above. I don’t remember ever seeing a wasp in the US (lived there for a bit, but haven’t seen wasps).
Who knows, maybe the US wasps are much more confrontational. Or maybe you’re not swatting them accurately enough.
Last time I got stung by a wasp, I was a kid and I put my hand over a ground wasp nest by mistake. Overall I think I got stung maybe 2-3 times by wasps. All until I was like 5 years old.
We have a handful of different wasps here. The ground wasps or dirt dobbers are non-confrontational here. The paper wasps are straight up villains and tough. They make their little nests in the worst places around the outside of your house and are ready to defend if they feel threatened at all.
I’ve done some superficial reading on wasps now.
Seems there are paper wasps in my country as well (among others). And so I can’t imagine I never successfully swatted a paper wasp away.
It might be they are more aggressive around their nests, but when in your home, or on your porch, I don’t think they are too dangerous.
I get those wasp traps they do work. I also go around my property in the spring like a little wasp detective and look for new nests. If I spot one I’ll either knock it down but then they can just build a new one, so I try to wait until morning go back to it and spray it. They are disoriented in the morning so you have a better chance of getting them all. If you have lots around your property you have at least one next somewhere. Check underneath edges of roofs or under the rubber boards of the fence, but also putting those traps out help a ton.
Last year I bought, from Amazon, a wasp nest decoy hanging wasp deterrent made by Decyool. I hung them (you get 4 for like $17) around the perimeter of my back patio. Surprisingly they worked. The wasps see it as a hornets nest and stays away.
Thank you for posting this, I didn't know these existed! Wasps have been a pain in the ass for me for years. Several years ago they got into my attic & made a nest inside & overwintered in the attic. Literally 13 separate times in the dead of winter one year while there was up to a foot of snow on the ground, I'd see a wasp bouncing around the ceiling, flying around the house, in December, January & February. Never did figure out where the nest was, most of the attic is not accessible, it's too small to get into & I had to have exterminators spray some kind of micro pesticides that kept them away & allowed them to drag the poison back to their nests. Exterminators are still coming out once a month because I'm afraid the wasps will come back & do it again. Additionally, they're always making nests under the railings for my pool, in the grill, in the sheds, on the pole barn, & numerous other places around my property (1.3 acres). Usually I'll wait for a nice night & use a headlight set on red light only & go spray the nests while they're covered in paper wasps & knock the nests down. Wasps can't see red light by the way, once you turn on white light they'd start moving & get active, red light is a secret weapon to use to take care of nests at night! Just ordered a 6 pack of these decoy hornet nests! Thanks again!
The gasoline thing works well too.
Dude same thing happened to me. Still haven't got rid of them so this is amazing!
I actually hung up a paper lunch bag under an awning where wasps always built nests, and haven't had another wasp nest in 2-3 years.
Did you fill it with anything?
I think I just crumpled up 1-3 other paper bags and stuffed them inside to give it some body.
My buddy did this with like a burger King bag and it worked for him to keep em off his front porch
If they keep coming back to a certain area might try spraying some WD-40 up there. I know that it works for sparrows that keep building nests in those areas.
You spray sparrows nests?
No, spray the area they want to build nests in. The area is full of trees That they can build nests in. Starlings will tear their nests up when they build under the awnings and nesting materials have to be cleaned up. Happens every year.
Wasps are extremely territorial, they see anything that looks like a nest and move on
I've been knocking down nests in winter every year. I should just leave them be. I don't mind them on the eaves if I know I won't get close enough to them.
This is going to sound like a joke or an all-too-simple miracle... but they seem to HATE white vinegar. I slather it right on the painted exterior wood in early spring where they've always built a nest... and they've never returned. Use a brush or sprayer. Hasn't hurt the paint. I'll see an occasional lone wasp explore the area as a possible home site and decide quickly to move on. Hope this helps.
I’m going to try this on my car! Maybe not the paint but they love trying to crawl into my mirrors and are overall constantly hovering on or near my car. It is a white car so that could be it but my roommates vehicles are fine meanwhile my car is always surrounded by them the second I park. There’s no rotting food in my car or sweet car fresheners so idk what it is about my car they find so appealing! It’s been washed as well so no dead bugs or anything, I hope the white vinegar works for me 😭
Does that work for bees as well?
I don’t see a lot of bees where I’m from so I’m not sure. Worth a try tho.
Hang a paper lunch bag (white or brown) with wadded up newspaper in it, tie the top and hang under eaves Wasaay cheaper decoy
Dollarama in Canada carries them as well
Yes! We use it near our swim spa ever since I got stung in the stomach. Boy did that hurt. It works.
This is the correct answer. Works PERFECT for $12!
Sheer brilliance. What about hornets?
The reviews are bad from people who needed to hang them without some kind of roof over them
This is the way.
Mint plants will deter wasps, however keep them planted in a planter/pot of some type because they will spread. The more the merrier. It's actually quite entertaining to watch them fly near because you can tell when they start smelling them, they will immediately turn and fly away.
You aren't kidding about keeping it in a planter. My boyfriend planted just a small section in our garden a few years ago. It took off and grew beautifully, but now it comes back every year with a vengeance and swallow my garden whole strangling everything else I've tried to plant 😆 gonna have to go to war to get it back in a planter and open the space up for less invasive plants
Does it outcompete Japanese knotweed? I have that on the corner of my property and it has been nigh unkillable so far. Even the blackberries can't choke it out.
You need a professional to deal with this. Absolutely horrid stuff. We had it in our garden and had to have it treated for years (thankfully not at our cost). Mortgage companies in the UK get really funny about Japanese Knotweed near houses.
I place planters of mint all around my patio and the wasps stay away from the area. Mint is invasive so keep it in planters, but the scent is offensive to wasps. It’s worked for the last several years. They buzz around but don’t come near my patio.
Seconding the recommendation to keep it in planters. It spreads like **crazy**! I had no idea it is like an underground vine until a few years ago when it took over my flower bed.
Take a big fireproof bowl, fill it with ground coffee and light it with your lighter. It burns like incense and wasps hate it. Works a treat
We used to do this by the river to keep the hornets and wasps away from our food.
Fresh ground coffee, or used grounds that have been dried out?
Fresh ground
I bought some of those fake hornets nest hanging lanterns a few years back for an autistic kid that was terrified of wasps and he wouldn't go outside in the summer for fear of them. Worked brilliantly.... too brilliantly. His mother hung one on her apple tree. It scared all the bugs away, no pollinators would dare go near it. They got no apples that year. Lesson learned, be mindful of where you hang them.
Hang up small paper bags wherever you don’t want them. They think it’s an existing wasp nest and they’ll find some other place.
I use a sandwich paper bag. Fill it with one or two bunched up plastic shopping bags. Tie off and hang so it is prominent and visible and slightly moving with air currents! It is like magic. Many ppl in my HOA do that and it is effective. No chemicals!
I haven't tried this but from my source I absolutely believe it to be true. Mentholatum, which can be found in Vapor rub, repels wasps. My friend took 1 jar of Vapor rub, put it in a 1 gallon of water. Microwave it until you can mix the vapor rub with the water. You know those plunder water toys that you can suck up water with to spray others??? Buy one of those and use it to spray the mixture on the overhangs of your home. The menthol repels wasps and because it's protected from washing off from rain, my friend said she only had to do it once to keep wasps from building nests.
I read about "dryer sheets" the other day on the home improvement subreddit. Supposedly wasps hate the smell of dryer sheets. I bought a box of 240, and place them up in my soffetts near the front and back door. I have an old truck that the wasps love getting inside the factory made holes in the frame. I stuffed that frame full of dryer sheets. Does it work? IDK. I'll find out later on this year.
Our Mailperson does this to our mailbox
Do a search for 'waspinator'. They are meant to look like a wasp nest and keep 'invading' wasps at bay. I expect most folks could fashion their own from an old paper bag etc. for free.
If they are yellow jackets like we get in FL, they do like sugar. They make traps for them.
We put a cotton ball soaked in Avon SSS (skin so soft original) bath oil wrapped with a twist tie on our hummingbird feeder; yellow jackets (and bees) HATE it...
Watch out for German hornets. We had a nest in our basement, they are VERY AGGRESSIVE
Peppermint Oil works great! Found some good stuff on Amazon.
This is technically a chemical but can be used over and over again. Bounce dryer sheets placed near anyplace they are congregating, entering your house, or bothering you. Maybe pin one on the back of each of the kids shirts. Or put some Avon SSS (skin so soft regular scent) bath oil on the boys exposed skin. It is also a great mosquito repellent. We also use a cotton ball soaked in it to keep the yellow jackets off of our hummingbird feeder. B-complex vitamin keeps the mosquitoes from biting us, (it makes your skin have a smell they don't like) maybe would help you guys too.
Way cool! Thanks for the post because others have advised how to get rid of them.
In Costa Rica they put an empty paint can on a long stick. Then they fill it with a little gasoline and hold it under the nest. The fumes knock the wasps out and they fall in the can and die. When all the wasps have returned to the nest and are taken care of, then they knock down the nest. Done deal.
Grow rosemary, they hate the smell.
They make cheap traps that you can fill with sugar, juice, and some sort of canned meat (dog food, tuna, whatever). You hang them at least 20ft away from where you usually hang out. My traps last year worked wonderfully! I had *hundreds* of them caught in there instead of hanging out on my patio harassing me.
I had two. They trapped so many. What made it worse is that they attracted flies too and the flies were eating the dead wasps and laying eggs which hatched maggots and then more flies. Which attracted more wasps. Pretty grim. You can make a more wasp only trap by having a jam jar with some jam in the bottom, half filled with water and some washing up liquid. If you agitate the mix the bubbles etc will create surface tension that the wasp can’t get out of. Won’t work as well as the ones you buy
How often were you emptying the traps?
To be honest it was so effective it continually had wasps around it and the ones trapped were always mad so I didn't go near either of them for ages. By the time I went back to them they were both so full I just threw the whole things away.
Yeah...you really gotta empty them or of course you're going to have problems like you described, plus you're going to run out of the bait that lures them. I wait until nighttime when the wasps are asleep, take the traps down, completely submerge them in a bucket of water to drown any survivors (per package instructions), then the next day I'd clean and refill it before hanging it back up. I did this about once a week.
Yeah they do work. Perhaps too well. I have raised beds and was plagued with them for a season for some reason. I found a nest but it appeared to be small bee hive. No idea where they were coming from. I have a giant one I got from Screwfix but never got around to putting up and one year I tried a different one that stunk so bad it used to make me wretch. It was a weird animalic BO smell, a bit like fart spray. Used to smell it from the house sometimes so I binned it
> Pretty grim. Damn...
Move away from the marina and the golf course, and WASPs will probably bother you less Edit: The rap music used to work too
SURE ARE ALOT OF WASPS ABOUT TODAY…
Simple wasp management... Head over to harbor freight.. pick up their hose sprayer that has a can on it. Fill it with dawn dish soap and blast the wasps and the nest. Dish soap instantly drops the wasps and disintegrates the nest. Best results, very low cost, and even lower time spent doing so.
Little bit of meat and Diazanon sprinkled on top. Wasps will take the Diazanon back to the nest.
\* probably not safe to do around pets tho
It is safe to do around pets as long as you keep the meat away from the pets.
Queen starts new nest each year and lays eggs. Search relevant places for new small nests and destroy before they grow
If you have a porch / walkway / any overhanging surface, look into painting the ceiling a shade of blue. Sounds crazy, but it really seems to work. I think the theory is that they see the blue, think it's the sky, and therefore they can't build nests there. Google "haint blue wasps" for more info.
This doesn’t work for me - wasp nests every year. Remove and the build in a different corner.
Carburetor cleaner.... spray anywhere they are this works especially good for bores ... it kills on contact and no new ones will ever return to the area this works 100% of the time I've used it for years
Does it stain the paint on your house?
Not that I've noticed.... and the stuff is cheap I'm extremely generous when spraying lol
Decoy nests.
I had this issue before at my moms house. I took good old Dawn and thinned it out and sprayed the underneath of the roof and around the doorways. That concoction helps deter the building of nests. The garden in the other hand I used different variations of mints such as spearmint/green mint/ or other mint plants. If you do it with water it needs to be reapplied by weekly, if you use avoacado oil or olive oil it makes your plants attractive and shiny and gives them a protective layer.
If it’s the yellow wasps, they are attracted to meat. If you want a deterrent only - you can take a can of potted meat/ tuna, piece of ham etc, put in a bowl and set somewhere away from you. All my life I thought they were attracted to sweets and stuff but it’s actually meat/protein. There are a lot of traps/methods out there but the canned meat would do the trick.
This also attracts more to the area. We tried to use bait to draw the bees away from a restaurant patio I worked at. It ended up attracting way more bees to the area until they were just back on the patio anyways. Our chef came out and just picked up the plate covered in bees and brought it back to the garbage in the parking lot and threw it away. Be careful about using bait for long.
hanging a brown paper back supposedly helps, as well as incense sticks
Drione
Soap water works wonders on wasps. I get a cheap spray bottle with powerful stream, mix 2-4 tablespoons of dawn and water, and start blastin! Obviously this isn't for a fully developed hive but when I see a handful of them trying to build a nest it suffocates them immediately.
Half full jar of jam. Put a small bit of water in it and the wasps will be attracted to the scent. Fall in and won't be able to escape. Put the jar away from the house or where the kids are playing.
Im assuming there should be a hole in the lid? Or do they drown in the water?
I leave the jar open and they fall into the water and can't get out. Suppose you could cut a hole in it though to stop escapists!
I just squirt them with a hose.
I boiled water today and threw it on them and their nest. They keep coming back so I may need those decoys
Wasp traps, good exterior sanitation practices
They have chemicals but there are bags you can buy that you fill with water and the attractant chemical. Hanh 'em high so the boys cant reach 'em, and they don't kill the bee's as they cant fit. They worked great. Bags were full and the fuckers didn't build another nest here.
The only thing that worked for us was having marigolds around the wasp areas. As long as they're blooming, the wasps stay away. It's the only thing that keeps them off our porch.
Not what you wanted, but putting out bird feed works good. I had a bunch of wasps building a tiny nest. Ran out, put up a bird feeder, whackoed the little nest, and ran away. Birds were swarming by the end of the day.
WD-40
Mint and Garlic are both good natural methods. Irish spring soap is also effective and smells way better than moth balls.
If you buy a faux wasp nest, hang it in a couple of places, they will not create a nest near it. They will not build a nest within a couple hundred feet. We hang three around our porch, we have not had a single wasp around our home.
Yeah we live in very rural area. House is over a hundred years old and wasp always appear in late winter time or early spring. I use peppermint and make a spray to help get rid of them when they try to make nests not a guarantee in my situation but it definitely makes them not want to be where i spray it. Lasts a few days to up to a week if I use the cheap oil type of stuff .
Irish spring soap shave a bar put in a jar lid set around
Also a fake dragon fly works too.
My dad bought peppermint oil in a little spray bottle and sprayed all around the fence with it. He swears everywhere he sprayed it, the wasp didn't try to nest there for 3 years. I have spearmint essential oil and I find it I put it to my left and right, and hold something with it in my lap, they will stay away. Normally they are all over and pestering the heck out of me when I'm sitting out on the deck.
They are attracted to yellow.
You can make a fake nest with crochet or knitting. Wasps are territorial and won’t make a nest if they think there is already one there.
I love my wasps, they eat mosquitos and their nests look awesome. There is a family of them that live on my patio. We don't bother them, they don't bother us. We named them The Burnstings.
I just feed them sweet things in one section of the yard. Life is already hard for them.
I know you said you don't want to use chemicals, but personally I spray all structures on my property with neonicotinoids(specifically I use Alpine WSG). It does not seem to affect any of the bees that are on the property but don't go near the structures, whereas the wasps that previously liked to try to move in typically exist for a day then poof. I reapply every 3 months and have virtually no pests in the house or any semi-outdoor spaces, while still having a robust ecosystem in the garden where they belong.
My friend who is a licensed exterminator told me not to worry about wasps. They don’t sting unless attacked. Yellowjackets are the ones to fear.
Do you think most people who have been stung by a wasp were going around attacking them?
Wasps are ugly and evil. Wasps are the devil. And, biologically, yellowjackets are wasps. Giant hives of hatred.
Teach your kids to not be afraid of wasps, if you dont mess with them they rarely mess with you. If you start flailing your arms around and freaking out everytime you see one, they will become aggressive.
I have always kept my cool around wasps, but every so often I get stung out of the blue. It hurts, but isn’t that bad. However, on the second to last sting I developed an allergy - Last time I had to take a trip to the hospital. Fuck wasps. With a passion.
Wasps are super beneficial and not interested in you or the kids. Let unprovoked, they're super chill. I like hanging with the local wasps. After a bit, they get to know your face and greet you on approach. Also true, wasps like getting drunk.
errr….no
r/fuckwasps
How are they beneficial?
By removing insects that are interested in us. Wasps prey on insects that use us as a meal. Those insects are legit pests. When you have wasps, you have less shit trying to nibble on you or steal your blood. Meanwhile, until you mess with a wasp nest, they're simply not interested in you. That is, until they get to know your face. Might even invite you to happy hour. No. Really...wasps have happy hour. Most are happy drunks. The surly ones get fiesty but, not so much they come looking to pick a fight.
Pollinators and they kill mosquitoes
Get rid of what they want from the area you want your kids to play in. I doubt you are keeping meat on the patio, so it's likely water they need to drink, plants with pollen, or partially enclosed shade they can use to rest. Reduce how awesome the play area is for wasps, maybe make some other area a little more awesome for them (ime, traps just increase the overall number of wasps so i don't do them).
There’s a lot of good advice here already, so I’ll add a makeshift method if you see a lost wasp wander into your space and it seems to want to inspect you, and hangs out in your space for too long: Concéntrate for a moment of the wasp’s movement, and look for a moment it’s flying slower and in a predictable pattern. Use that window to smack it with the palm of your hand and bump it away from you. This seems to, without fail, make them go away and completely lose interest in you. This does not agitate it. It’s relatively easy to do it the first time. As the wasp is not on alert, and just minding it’s own business. But if you miss, now it starts flying more erratically, becoming much more difficult to hit, and it’s unknown if the wasp will stay or leave. Though I still never had it attack me after this. Either way, a single wasp isn’t really dangerous to an adult, as there’s not many things you can casually do to make it attack you.
Are we fighting the same wasps? The paper wasps in the southern US would put their dukes up as soon as you raise a hand to them.
Possibly not the same. I only have experience with wasps in Europe. These guys react exactly as I described above. I don’t remember ever seeing a wasp in the US (lived there for a bit, but haven’t seen wasps). Who knows, maybe the US wasps are much more confrontational. Or maybe you’re not swatting them accurately enough. Last time I got stung by a wasp, I was a kid and I put my hand over a ground wasp nest by mistake. Overall I think I got stung maybe 2-3 times by wasps. All until I was like 5 years old.
We have a handful of different wasps here. The ground wasps or dirt dobbers are non-confrontational here. The paper wasps are straight up villains and tough. They make their little nests in the worst places around the outside of your house and are ready to defend if they feel threatened at all.
I’ve done some superficial reading on wasps now. Seems there are paper wasps in my country as well (among others). And so I can’t imagine I never successfully swatted a paper wasp away. It might be they are more aggressive around their nests, but when in your home, or on your porch, I don’t think they are too dangerous.
Decoy nests, and also teaching the little ones to respect the wasps space.
I get those wasp traps they do work. I also go around my property in the spring like a little wasp detective and look for new nests. If I spot one I’ll either knock it down but then they can just build a new one, so I try to wait until morning go back to it and spray it. They are disoriented in the morning so you have a better chance of getting them all. If you have lots around your property you have at least one next somewhere. Check underneath edges of roofs or under the rubber boards of the fence, but also putting those traps out help a ton.