I had a big problem and was trying my darndest to figure it out. Everytime we went out the backdoor to play, there were wasps. LOTS of wasps. So bad that one little girl in my childcare got stung two different times over the course of two weeks.
I had to figure out where they were coming from. So I sat on the porch and watched…after a few minutes, I finally figured it out.
See my door below? (Don’t mind my reflection…yes I’m wearing my jammies and a robe-just keeping it real here. I often write blog posts on the weekends when I’m in my jammies.) Anyway, see the header on the door?
There, behind the header trim piece, was a little wasp nest….only problem, after checking all the doors and windows on the back porch, I discovered that ALL of the headers on the doors AND windows had wasp nests.
UGH. What was I supposed to do? This is normally a problem Kramer would have taken care of. Now it’s just me. How do I fix this? Last year we had a wasp nest and I tried to spray them and ended up stung…UGH.
Also about then, I saw a wasp nest in the peek of the house. Oh my.
Well then I did a little more checking and looking. We’d been getting wasps at the front of the house too. Could the front of the house have the same problem?YES. Yes it could and it did!! MOST of my windows had wasps…my garage doors had wasps too.
Well that left me knowing that this was a bigger problem than I can handle and a bigger problem than what I want the kids trying to handle.
So Kalissa said to call a bug guy and I did. Oh my. I was so impressed. He came and took a look. He said he could take care of it but being I did childcare he wanted to do it after childcare hours. WOW. He offered. I didn’t even ask!! Impressive.
He was here about 50 minutes. He had two other guys come with him and it was $83. WOW!!
I was so happy with the services and the cost. There is no way I could have managed so efficiently if I had to have done it myself, plus, he said the windows were kind of a bugger. At the top corners, the wasps had nests…but further towards the center of the headers was space that he couldn’t see into so he didn’t know if there was more nest, more wasps or what so he had to use a smoker to go in there and smoke them.
I feel hopeful that things will be better. It had gotten so I was nervous to take the kids outside. I didn’t want anyone getting stung.
He told me to let him know if I had anymore trouble. My hope is I won’t as frost will here soon as well.
If you’re in NE Iowa and looking for a good bug man I highly recommend Hometown Pest Control out of Hawkeye Iowa. He’s responded quickly and seems very knowledgeable. He’s been kind and very considerate of the needs of the house with my doing childcare. He definitely gets an A+ rating from me!!
For years and years, I mean decades we have had wasps! We had our house sided 20 years ago and those men must have bought every can of wasp spray in every store in a 20 mile radius! Anyway one day this summer I noticed there were no wasps to be found! Like where did they go? They had had nests behind the vinyl window shudders that would bend the shudders! Nests in the brick wall, just everywhere! I don’t know if they had it with winter and said we’re not going to fight this cold weather anymore and committed suicide lol! What ever it took, please stay away!
I had very little wasp in Central Iowa this year, too. A few years ago, we had a huge wasp nest in the peak of a my 2 story house. I waited til it frosted, and then one of my sons powerwashed it out of there. I didn’t know if they’d return to the same nest or not. I wonder if you can hang a paper bag in one of your trees in your backyard for next summer. I have read, that is made to look like a paper wasp nest..and nothing else will take up residence. Might be worth some research.
A nice problem solved :) Thanks for the information. I think your dog was wondering what you were doing outside without him or her:)
I have had carpenter bees take up residence in my back fence. They make their holes in the side of the posts that face the fence, so you can’t put any killer stuff down the holes because you can’t reach them. I read online to make a fake wasp nest and put it up in the back yard because the carpenter bees are territorial.
I took several brown plastic bags, stuffed them inside one bag, then taped them into a wasp nest looking shape. tied it to my gutter outside my back door and VOILA!! No more carpenter bees. I took it down last week. I’ll make another one in the spring.
So glad you called a pest guy! You had real infestation!
Last summer I had wasps in the tail lights of my dad’s van and my car, as well as the AC unit outside. I had some wasp spray, went out early in the morning when it was chilly and sprayed them. This year they built a nest inside the cupboard my dad has for gardening stuff. The wonderful guys who did my lawn this year took care of it. I’m allergic to bees and wasps so they are a big fear-factor for me. I’m willing to put up with bees because of the good they do, but not wasps. Good to know about the fake wasp nest…I’ll make one to put out next spring!
Is there any way to seal those areas to prevent the wasps from coming back next year?
You would have easily spent $83 on supplies to do it yourself and got stung several times as well. Good job.
When we had wasps at our apartment, I used to use that can that shoots 20 ft. Sometimes I think it just made them mad! Hope you get it taken care of and soon!
Love and prayers
We had a lot of wasps this year too. My son was stung just by walking on a sidewalk next to our house. We got rid of a couple of nests but I know there were others around we didn’t see. We have lots of bees too but they leave us alone since they are mostly feeding in the garden. I might have to try the bag trick if we have a lot of wasps next year.
I make the brown stuffed bag thing and hang it from my patio umbrella on the deck to keep flying things away. It works for me!
So glad the wasps were dealt with and efficiently. Good to know you now have a good service to call on.
I used to have wasp problems every summer but never really addressed it until a family moved in next door and her daughter was highly allergic. I did research and learned that only the queen made it through the winter so every spring I went into overdrive looking for any single wasps and sprayed her! I also used a spray that had residual killing so that it continued to kill any wasps that returned–I sprayed every area that I knew that they had nested in before. This just about eradicated the wasps from around my house and my neighbor’s house. Being proactive in the spring really helped to significantly reduce the number of wasps!
We had wasp that were dive bombimg us every time we got out of the car and they were getting into an upstairs playroom. I am highly allergic. The best thing we ever did was have the guy come and spray like you did. Took care of the problem for over a year.