By: Kathleen Mierzejewski
The most common types of wasps you will find around your home include yellow jackets, paper wasps and hornets. These are the most common and will build their nests right where you don’t want them making their living in your property a complete inconvenience.
How to Get Rid of Wasps
If you have a wasp problem and have wanted to know how to kill wasps, you have come to the right place. Although wasps are predators, they are beneficial because they do prey on other insects you don’t want around your yard or garden.
During late summer and fall, though, they become a little more interested in collecting pollen and sweet things instead of bugs because their queen has laid eggs and the pollen and sugar is what feeds the larvae. This is why late summer picnics can become a challenge on how to kill wasps as you swat at the pests while they attack your food or drinks.
The wasps that build paper nests will build them under any horizontal surface they can find. Usually the overhangs of buildings or the eaves are perfect for their building. The next is made up of a paper pulp made from wood the wasps have chewed and spit out. They usually look for quiet, out of the way places to build their nests, but sometimes this conflicts with where humans conduct their activities, becoming a dangerous problem.
Sometimes yellow jackets are in the ground. They build their nest underground and you don’t know they’re there until you go gardening and find them in your garden. Killing wasps in a plant isn’t too difficult. You need to wait until night time when all the yellow jackets have returned to their nest before treating it.
If you want to know how to get rid of wasps, the first step is to identify which type of wasp you are dealing with. Some of them are so volatile that you really should contact an expert to remove the nest.
But, if you would like to try to eliminate wasps on your own, there are several types of sprays you can buy at the store. Or, you can try dousing the nest in gasoline or WD-40. You do not need to light the nest on fire, the fumes from the gas or the WD-40 will be enough to kill the wasps.
Anytime you are applying a wasp deterrent or wasp killer, be sure to wear thick clothing and cover all skin. Wasps can be highly aggressive if provoked.
There are wasp deterrents out there that eliminate wasps from your property pretty efficiently. However, some of wasps are stronger than the wasp deterrents you can buy over the counter, so hiring an expert would be best if home remedies fail.
The best time of year to eliminate wasps is in June because the queen has already established a colony, but it’s small and will need less attention to eliminate it. However, since it’s early in the season, it could be difficult to find the nest because it is also still small. Also, the best time of day to control wasps is at night when it is cooler. When the temperatures drop below 50 degrees F., the wasps cannot fly as easily.
Using a home remedy to remove a wasp nest is not always necessary. Sometimes you won’t find the nest until fall, and shortly thereafter the winter weather will kill whatever wasps remain inside the nest.
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