Wasps in the wall cavities . . .

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Ugh. Was in the bathroom today, and after washing my hands, heard a weird almost crackling sound. At first I thought it was water dripping . . . I was afraid there was a leak in the roof (we have a sloped ceiling in this second story part of the house) or a dripping pipe. Listening carefully, (after feeding the cats to get them to shut up) I realized it was coming from the wall/ceiling area, not a pipe, and it's hasn't rained in days. Went onto the porch to make sure it wasn't something rattling in the breeze on the other side of the wall (my wife has a lot of junk out there - once I thought I heard a slow "drip, drip, drip", and realized it was some box sitting on an uneven stool that wobbled with the wind and was bumping the siding.)

But I had a fear of what it actually was, and when I climbed on the porch railing (carefully, it's second story) a bit and looked along the roof, sure enough I see a bunch of wasps coming and going through the small space under one of the slate shingles, right by where the vent pipe comes out. They must be living in either the wall or the space between the roof rafters.

I have a terrifying, irrational fear of wasps, hornets, and bees and such, and I feel like I about to throw up. We used to get a few wasps nests on the eaves of the porch, and I would just suit up in the morning and spray them with the foaming wasp spray stuff, or if it was a solitary wasp, smash them against the ceiling with a stick. Once we had them in an exterior electrical box. (And I still had the heebie jeebies after the winter when I opened it up to replace it and a handful of desiccated corpses fell out.

I am freaking out right now (again, I hate these things, and get too worked up.) Called my father, and he's of the "lets go up in the early morning before they get going and spray them" mindset; he's offered to come help. I know the wasp spray will go far, but I figure we still need a ladder to reach the second story eaves, and being confined on a ladder when wasps may be getting angry is not my cup of tea.

I'm mostly terrified by how many of these things must be in there if I can hear it through the walls . . .

I think any DIY attempts may just be a bad idea at this point, and calling a professional is the best course of action. But ugh. The minute I read anything online, I get terrified by horror stories of people finding entire wall cavities filled with these things. I am not going to sleep well tonight . . .

At least we haven't seen any in the house.

I started the day off with a cat peeing on the floor right in front of me, and now this. Today has just been awesome!

[Judson Green]

Funny the things that freak us out. Wasps, bees and the sort don't bother me in the least but spiders and these centipedes have me freaking like a little girl.

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Even looking at the picture is giving me the heebie jeebies. I swear these things were made in a lab. Like a cross between a centipede and a spider, crazy fast, can jump, crawl on the ceiling and walls and I've seen up to 3" long.... Terrifying!

[David G Baker]

I have had similar problems with yellow jackets. My critters found a tiny hole in my concrete block foundation. I watched them come and go for a few days and tried some of the spray. It didn't work. I have a fear of stinging critters similar to your fear but not as strong. I called a pro. He charged me $99 and this guaranteed me to be critter free for the whole season. He spent some time watching the critters entering and leaving by the hole and decided that they had a nest under my house. He crawled under the house with no protective gear and a small powder duster filed with Drione that kills the yellow jackets instantly. He found the nest and powdered it and moved some insulation and found a gigantic nest. He powdered that nest and this killed almost all of the critters. I plugged the hole and haven't seen any yellow jackets in that area in several years.
I purchased some Drione off line and a duster. I found some yellow jackets moving into the base of my deck door trim and powdered the area. They disappeared. I have had several of the big nests built under my eaves. I would wait until dark and cool evenings and spray the nests with Spectracide. I would do this two nights in a row and the nest died. If I find yellow jackets flying out of a small hole in the ground I wait until dark when all of the critters are home for the day and pour around a quart of kerosene down the hole (igniting the kerosene is optional but not necessary) the petroleum kills them all. Until you overcome your fears I suggest that you do hire the pro because the critters can kill you.

[Bryan Rocker]

I just spent a week dispatching a nest of yellow jackets off my front porch sofit, several hundred of them. I am a DIY kind of guy but I was close to calling out the pros. Unless you can see the nest you need pro strength chemicals. I had to rip off the steel soffit they put on and I am glad I did.

Several things to remember,
1. They are not generally aggressive.
2. Don't plug their exit hole, that will force them to find a new one.
3. Depending on the specie they will vacate the nest in the fall
4. If you can see the nest Spectracide or Hotshot wasp killer are the thing to you
5. Most wasps are actually good to have around they help thin out other pests....

As to things being afraid of, my wife is phobic of spiders, the louder she yells the bigger it is and the faster I run. I am the spider assassin in our house.

Bryan

[Bryan Rocker]

Here's a pic of the one I took out. It stretched under the next panel to. Took me 5 cans of spectracide and some SEVEN dust.....
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[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Jeez, that picture startled me on my phone, Judson.

Given that I can only see there entry point, and not the nest, I'm leaning towards a pro... I certainly don't think my father's idea of using the foam spray is apt to work in this case, although it has worked for me in the past with visible nests and that one in the exterior junction box. But I'll see what's available at the home center or Tractor Supply. Thing is, given their entry point, I'd have to remove slate to really get in there, unless I can get to them from the attic. (Don't think I can given how far over this is). Unless I can apply it through their entry point, it may be beyond me. A lot depends on whether my dad's ladder can even reach the second story I guess.

As long as they don't chew through the plaster and eat me in my sleep, right?

It's funny, spiders and other bugs can startle me, but I do not get freaked out. I actually feel a little dumb about he wasp fear.

[Jim Matthews]

Nothing dumb about it. Your house- either they earn their keep or face eviction. Pay a professional with a respray package and be done with them!

[Chris Padilla]

We have a couple of those yellow wasp catchers hanging around the eaves of our house and they are always full by the end of the season. One has to keep an eye and ear out for these guys before they build the Hilton in or around your home...Motel6s are easier to deal with. ;) I've seen fewer and fewer of them now that I have the catchers out.

[Matt Day]

I had the pros at my house 2 weeks ago for some yellow jackets that were nesting in my eave. Since I could not see the nest, I did not know how many of them there were. The pros came out and took care of it for $200. Based on how many bees were flying in and out in 10 seconds, the guy thought there was about 3000 bees.
I was happy to pay that much money since I think it was above and beyond a DIY job. The guys had a modified vacuum to try to capture some of them. Apparently they send them to a lab that helps vaccinate people with allergies. And they had a whole bee suit and a fogger and all that stuff.
Especially if you are terrified of bees, call the pros!

[Joe Tilson]

The only real way to kill wasp is to go after them after dark when all the bees are in the nest and will not come out after you. I mean dark thirty, no light out at all. They mostly get in the ground around here, so it is easy the kill them. Can't say what works best because it's illegal in most areas. If in doubt call the pros!

[Harold Burrell]

Joshua,

I ABSOLUTELY know what you are feeling. I am TERRIFIED of bees. (OK...bumblebees, carpenter bees and the occasional honey bee only mildly irritate me.) Yellow Jackets, wasps and hornets freak me out.

I mean, the get-out-of-my-way-or-I'll-knock-you-down kind of freaked out!

I am the cheapest guy in the world...but there is no way that I would try and tackle that thing on my own. If you can hear them in the wall, well...I would either call a pro...or burn the house down.

Man...just READING about this makes me want to pee my pants! :eek:

[Chris Padilla]

Don't click this link, Harold. You might have nightmares for a long, long time.... ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_giant_hornet

[Harold Burrell]

Don't click this link, Harold. You might have nightmares for a long, long time.... ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_giant_hornet

Why, oh WHY did I click on that?!!!

Chris, I thought we were friends. ;)

[Peter Kelly]

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/bees_vs_hornet

Really not for the insect-phobic but amazing to watch.

[Dennis McDonaugh]

I've been stung four times this year already, each time I looked around and found a nest near where I was working. All were small and dispatched with a squirt of wasp killer.

[Fred Perreault]

Does anybody use a systemic insecticide for the wasps-hornets-yellow jackets? Contact poisons will only eliminate what you hit, but don't the others keep on trucking?

[David Weaver]

I've used sevin for yellowjackets and they've never survived it.

Sevin is bad for them, it's bad for us, too. I don't use systemics because I've got small kids, and anything that has residual effect on bugs probably has residual effect on us. Around the house, I just take the nest out, and that's about it.

A couple of years ago, I had a robin that had a taste for paper wasps. My gray weathered split rail fence coming off of the house is an absolute favorite for paper wasps (I guess they're removing cellulose from the weathered fence to make their paper for their nests). She/he sat on the fence every day and picked off the wasps as they went by. Still had a few that year, but not like other years. Never saw a robin do that before or since.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

. . . A couple of years ago, I had a robin that had a taste for paper wasps. My gray weathered split rail fence coming off of the house is an absolute favorite for paper wasps (I guess they're removing cellulose from the weathered fence to make their paper for their nests). . . .

Years ago, when I used to make guitars on the third story porch of my apartment building, I wasn't always judicious about cleaning up the shavings and sawdust, and would often just sweep it into a pile or put into a bucket to clean up later. Later, I found the paper wasps would always be hitting the pile frequently - they weren't building their nests there, (but close by) but I guess they were doing the same thing. I was working a lot of padauk that summer; I was hoping to at least see bright red wasp's nests, but unfortunately, after they do what ever regurgitation magic they do to make their nests, it still came out the same dull gray color as always, and like any other wasps nest that got made on the rafters of that porch, it got sprayed or smashed while it was still smaller than a golf ball.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I've used sevin for yellowjackets and they've never survived it.

Sevin is bad for them, it's bad for us, too.

Not saying it's fine and dandy and that care shouldn't be exercised with pesticides, but I thought the active ingredient of Sevin was Carbaryl, and it was the same stuff used in head lice shampoo? I don't actually know anything about this stuff, of course. I was just under the impression that unless you were exposed to a large amounts of it, or ingested it, it was fairly safe around people.

Got some recommendations for local pest folks (anyone used any of the chain companies, like Orkin? That was one of the recommendations) I was working all week and my wife has been away from home, so we'll make some calls Monday. I'll report back if there's anything terrifyingly amazing to share.

Part of me is still leaning towards this, though:


http://youtu.be/aCbfMkh940Q