Wasps

                           Advanced Pest Control

Wasp Treatment?
APS pest control services do not like to destroy wasps nests! as wasps are beneficial in the role of predators on other insects. If the wasps' nest is not in a sensitive location we try to leave it where it is.

Wasp Nests?
If however the location of a wasps nest makes day to day life difficult e.g. the nest is very close to a door, garage roof, ground level (garden or wall ventilation), it may be necessary to have the nest destroyed. By dusting the entrance to the nest with pesticide (Derris Dust) the nest will be destroyed if the wasps carry dust into the nest.

The treatment involves spraying approved pesticides around the point that the wasps are entering the building or if the nest is visible at the entrance of the wasp nest. The pest controller will not remove the nest but the poison should effect the insects within three days. However, there may be wasps continuing to emerge from the nest, especially a large nest and one treated at the end of the season (August / September), up to a week after the treatment. These wasps will appear 'dopey' and should die soon after emerging from the nest. The wasp nest will not need to be retreated because the residue wasp pesticide should still be affecting them as they use the entrance to the nest

How Wasp Infestation Starts?
A queen wasp starts a new nest (old nests are not reused) in late spring by chewing tiny amounts of wood, which with the wasps saliva, becomes a papery material. The nest may be in a roof space, hanging in a tree, shrub or in the eaves, in an air vent, or in the ground. These early golf ball sized nests are often seen in roof spaces when the queen has been killed whilst foraging for food for her young.

Later, when the young develop into female workers, the queen will remain in the nest to produce more offspring, and the nest will increase in size often to a volume sufficient to fill a bin liner. The nest is however mostly insulation (air) layers inside, and even very large nests may be compressed into a small amount of material i.e. the wood removed to make the nest causes no structural damage.

Throughout the summer the nest develops with the workers feeding the young on other insects. A wasps nest in the garden may well keep the garden free of other insect pests because of the very large number are consumed - just watch the continual stream of workers carrying insects into the nest in August.

In late summer/autumn, a hatch of young queens and males leave the nest empty and redundant. Foraging workers now turn to sweet/sugary foods. The workers and males die leaving only the queens who look for shelter to spend the winter and then set up new nest sites in the next year.