The Best Ways To Prevent A Wasp Nest On Your Property

There is nothing worse than trying to enjoy a beautiful afternoon in the backyard, just to be taken out of your rest and relaxation to swat away buzzing wasps. The problem is, you can’t have summer without having wasps, so to a certain extent you’ll have to learn to live with them. However, you don’t have to learn to live with a wasp nest, and we want to help you prevent wasps from ever deciding that your property makes an ideal spot to nest.

Once wasps have settled into a new colony, wasp nest removal can be very difficult and dangerous if done improperly. Tenacious and dangerous when provoked, it is absolutely not recommended for you to try and remove a wasp nest without the help of pest control experts.

That’s why wasp nest prevention is key.  

Here are some of the best ways to prevent wasps from ruining your summer barbecues, without stirring up a hornet’s nest.

The Best Ways To Prevent Wasps From Building A Wasp Nest

In the fall, a queen wasp goes into hibernation as her workers die off from the cold. When she awakens in the summer, she sets out to build an entirely new nest from scratch. What this means is that you have a wasp prevention grace period in the early summer to find and get rid of prime wasp nest locations before a queen can set up shop.

Common locations for wasp nests are hollow tree trunks, eaves, railings, overhangs and even your child’s play house. There are a variety of natural repellents you can use to keep wasps away from prime nesting locations. Specifically, peppermint or dish soap work well.

One particularly cunning trick to stop wasps from moving in is setting up a commercially available decoy wasp nest somewhere visible on your property. Wasps are highly territorial, but they’ll respect another colony’s territory.

Maintain Your Yard To Prevent A Wasp Nest

Once you take care of the obvious wasp nest locations, you need to think about how to prevent wasps from other people’s properties making their way onto yours. In other words, you have to keep the rest of your yard inhospitable to them. Luckily, that just means doing the yard maintenance you should already be doing anyways.

This includes some of the chores you’d like to put off, but they make a big different in wasp prevention. Things like keeping shrubs and trees pruned and leaves and grass clippings cleaned up. Additionally, the same way birds will flock to your yard looking for water, so will insects. This means you should remove standing water from bird baths and rain gutters.

If you’re wondering what to do about food and drink when hanging out in the backyard, don’t worry. You can still enjoy your sweet libations and barbecues, just don’t leave these items outside longer than they need to be. Keep food covered when not being served. Don’t leave sugary drinks laying out in the sun once they’re done being drunk. There are also many different reusable drink containers on the market that allow you to keep your drinks cold. Additionally, these containers avoid the dreaded wasp stuck in a car or accidentally swallowed.

Due to their sweet tooth (or mandibles), wasps love to hover around garbage. They eagerly await the chance to lick any sweet stains on the side. This means you should always make sure your trash can lids are securely closed and frequently hosed off.

How Not To Prevent Wasps Or Wasp Nests

Once a nest has fully established itself, it becomes extremely dangerous to even go near it. Annoying just one wasp or getting too close to the wasp nest can quickly turn into a whole colony of peeved off wasps which could result in many painful stings.

While there are many myths about how to keep wasps away, they can be inaccurate and unsafe. For instance, using liquids to drown out a ground nest is ineffective. This is because the tunnels go down lower than you would expect. On top of that, chances are the queen will survive and live to nest another day.

Think it’s as easy as covering the hole with a big rock or caulking? Think again. Unless you fully seal the hole at night while the entire colony is inside, you’re just going to end up with swarms of wasps upset and looking for a way back in.

Attempting to vacuum them out is more likely to land you in a hospital ward than stop wasps. The best way to keep wasps away is simply prevention, as discussed above. But when that fails, Terminix Canada is here to help.

For 90 years, Terminix Canada’s bee hive and wasp nest removal services have helped thousands of Canadians keep themselves and their families safe from potentially life-threatening attacks.

We use special insecticidal dust and aerosols to neutralize hives and environmentally-friendly insecticides to make underground wasp nests uninhabitable. Contact us today to make the wasps plaguing you buzz off.