Wasp Control - Killing Wasps

Wasps feed from dustbins, visit dumps and feed on dead animal bodies, so are capable of spreading disease. However wasps are mainly thought of as a nuisance pest rather than a serious risk to health.
Wasps can of course sting. The sting is used by the wasp for killing small insects for food but it is also capable of using it as a very effective weapon. As a general rule, wasps will only sting if they are disturbed. However, at the end of the season the wasps will begin to feed on fermenting fruit which makes them more irritable and more likely to sting people. Wasp stings affect people in very different ways; some are hardly affected at all whilst others may need hospital treatment.

Identifying and Treating Wasp Nests

So how do you know if you have a nest? You may be able to see the nest itself, they are normally a grey or yellow colour, approximately round in shape with a small hole at the bottom. However, often the nest isn't visible at all and the only indication that there is one is a constant stream of wasps flying in and out of a particular place.

Our Wasp control specialists can call out at a time to suit you and will provide a safe, efficient treatment to the nest.  We can normally provide a pest control service that day.  Where the nest is in the garden or in the house we will apply a small amount of insecticide to the nest and then remove the nest or, a if this is not possible treat the wasp nest and in about 2 hours the treatment will be complete.  Treating a wasp nest is simple and straightforward. We work on reputation and people who use our services always seem to use us again in the future when they encounter other pest control problems.  We treat hundreds of wasps nests in the Sheffield area and our reputation for fast, efficient, value-for-money treatments continues to grow, year-on-year. To see how Sheffield Pest Solutions can help you with your wasp problem, call us now.

What do Wasps look like?

The wasps most commonly seen in the garden and around the home are the worker wasps. They are about 1 to 2cm in length, have a distinctive black and yellow striped body and are shiny in appearance.
Strangely wasps are sometimes mistaken for honey bees or hover flies but they really look quite different. Honey bees have orange and brown stripes and are covered in brown fur. Hover flies, al-though they are the same colour as wasps, are easy to distinguish by their hovering flight. Both these insects are useful pollinators of flowers and crops, are generally friendly to people and should not be destroyed if at all possible.

Wasp's Life Cycle

In the spring the queen wasp emerges from hibernation and starts to look for a suitable place to build a nest. The location of the nest depends on the type of wasp and nests may be built almost any-where including: loft spaces; sheds; garages; walls and in trees and bushes.

The nest itself is made of small pieces of wood which the wasp chews and mixes with its saliva to produce a paper-like material. The queen builds the first part of the nest and at this stage it is smaller than a golf ball. She lays her eggs inside the nest and feeds them until they hatch out as adults. Once these first worker wasp have hatched they take over the tasks of enlarging the nest and providing food for the developing eggs.

By the end of the summer the nest will have grown considerable and can be any-thing from football sized to several feet wide. An average nest will contain between 3,000 and 5,000 wasps by this stage but not all of these will be adults. The worker wasps feed on nectar and fruit but they will also be seen catching insects which they feed to the young wasps inside the nest.

During the late summer males and new queens leave the nest and mate. The newly fertilised queens will then fly off and look for a suitable place to hibernate for the winter.
As autumn approaches and the weather turns colder the nest starts to degenerate and all the worker males will die. The nest becomes an empty shell that is never used again.