Last year, my family and I found wasps in our backyard attached to the wood frame of the glass door. The wasp nest looks very similar to the one in the picture above. It wasn't a big deal at first since we don't really go to the backyard as much, and the nest was smaller than a fist with 3 or 4 wasps maximum. We also thought they would just die off from the excessive heat outside (100+ F°), but we were wrong. About a month or so past and the nest grew to about the size of two fists. There were about 30 to 40 wasps now. We didn't really want to spend on an exterminator since we knew it may be expensive, so we just taped up the door and let them be. They were going to die anyway around the end of summer where the nights are a lot colder.
They did not let us be. They were somehow crawling through the door cracks. They got in the house! We luckily got rid of all of the ones that got in. Enough was enough. We couldn't let nature deal with them any longer, so we called the local government exterminator.
To give you a better perspective, we had no backyard gates to enter the backyard from the outside, and it was a moderately small backyard. The other side of the walls around the backyard were other people's backyards.
We thought of just hosing them down with water, but the hose in the backyard was like 2 feet away from the wasp nest. Also, we wouldn't be able to get all of them since most of them went away from the nest during the daytime.
The exterminator came and sprayed and dusted pesticides on the wasp nest. It ended up being two wasp nests on the door just 1 feet away from each other. The other wasp nest was hidden from view unless you were outside. Those wasps were very aggressive and took like 10 minutes to die. The late arriving wasps of those nests were like what happened. They touched the pesticide on the door so I know they wouldn't last long either.
This year, we were prepared in case they came back. I bought a Waspinator (fake wasp nest bag), and a Trapstik (green plastic bug catcher).
I had doubts this was even going to work since the reviews for the product were basically a hit or miss with wasps. In other words, you would have to try it to see if the wasps are fooled by it, or just build a nest anyway near it. They were fooled by it. Four or five wasps scouted it and left. No nest was built.
The box is empty since the Waspinator is currently in use.
I bought the Trapstik just in case the fake nest did nothing. Also, I thought might as well trap them since they are horrible pests. It has four sides with clear glue. The glue doesn't have a strong bond to it when skin touches it, so there are no worries when handling the Trapstik. I touched it to find out. It came with plastic bird guards, but I chose not to use it since people complained that it made the bug trap ineffective. I kept the birds in mind also so I placed it where they don't usually fly by. Fortunately, no birds flew by it and got stuck.
This is the other side of the box. It shows what kind of insects they can trap. I don't think it shows everything since it trapped lots of flies and gnats. The wasp picture with the green box around it looks almost exactly the same as the wasps that I've seen.
From what I've seen, it hasn't caught any wasps, but I did put Trapstik near the Waspinator so they might just be keeping their distance and not necessarily avoiding it.
How I setup both the Trapstik and Waspinator:
- I filled up the Waspinator (fake nest bag) with grocery bags so it looks fuller. I covered the opening of the Waspinator bag with duct tape, just in case. I didn't want it to be counterproductive.
- I left the bird guards off and hung it near where the wasps previously built nests.
- I hung both the Waspinator and Trapstik along side each other and near the previous wasp nest locations. I made sure they weren't near enough to stick to each other. Then, I secured both of them with zip ties.
Note: I set these up in early February of this year so by the time the wasps were scouting for places to colonize, they see an already established (fake) nest.