Super aggressive wasps in my back yard

redrumloa

redrumloa

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This really sucks! In the last couple months several people have been stung by wasps in my yard, multiple times. In one instance a friend of mine and myself were just standing in one spot talking and a wasp flew right in his face and stung his nose, unprovoked. I've been fairly lucky, but several times yesterday alone I was chased out of my yard and down the street by a wasp, chasing me the whole way. I shit you not, the fucker chased me down the street! The f***ed up part is I cannot find any more active nests in my yard. It is getting to the point that if someone is in the yard, without fail a wasp will attack.

I'm going to get a few wasp traps and hang them at various points, but I'm not really comfortable this will fix the problem. Anyone here ever have a similar problem?
 
There is no such thing as wasps flying around Minnesota at this time of year. They're still frozen bee balls.

Though I heard about the predictions for Monster Mosquitoes coming to Florida 20x larger than the typical mosquito and it's bite feels like a knife cut. Seems to me those wasps have some competition.
 
build a wasp trap:
cut the cone top off a 1 litre plastic bottle,
place wasp bait liquid inside bottle enough to cover bottom
flip the cone and place inside bottom of bottle
wasps drown in soapy water in bottom of bottle

bait depends on season

fermented fruit juice
fruit juice, dilute 5:1, add piece of bread (for the yeast), couple drops of dish washing liquid

hang a rib bone on a fishing string above the bottle
have soapy water in bottom of bottle


Use a bug zapper:
wasps are not attracted to the UV Light!
hang a rib bone from bottom on fishing line, tape some bright ribbons to side of zapper to flutter in breeze
a model that buzzes a lot is best
 
A bucket with lemonade and dishwashing soap also helps. Preferable put on the far end of the garden.
 
well itd be great if i could see the particular wasp... different kinds have different housing so locating the nest isn't always easy... if you get the chance to slap the crap out of one post a pic. there are some that appear black, but upon closer examination they have a bluish tint... those big buggers, are mean, and they live in holes in the ground. the holes are barely 1/4 inch across and they can be anywhere... if it is a ground dweller the only effective means of getting em gone is with a jug of kerosene poured down the hole and a floor mat or something over it for a week or two at any rate there are a plethora of things you can do in addition to the suggestions already provided... plant mint and/or marigolds around your house and along the outskirts of your house, wasps do not like the smell of them, or citronella. you can also plant flowers that attract hummingbirds and/or dragonflies... i had an issue with them once (my large sunflowers attract them); but the bats that lived in the abandoned garage across the street, took care of them with a serious vengeance and, until they tore the shed down, kept my yard mosquito free. build a bat box or two and mount them high on a tree/pole or in the eave peaks of your house, and in a short while you'd see a real difference...
 
bats are active at night, wasps are active during day, many people have observed wasp nests on a bat house itself, so for most species of bats they seem to co-exist


dragonflies and damselflies feed on wasps
 
metalman said:
bats are active at night, wasps are active during day, many people have observed wasp nests on a bat house itself, so for most species of bats they seem to co-exist


dragonflies and damselflies feed on wasps
Click to expand...

im guessing you mean like these fellers

hornetbox.JPG


Wasp nestsPaper wasps form gray honeycomb shaped nests on the ceiling of bat houses (an example of this nest can be seen in the upper left corner of the bat house on the cover of this booklet). These insects are not aggressive and happily coexist with bats. Unfortunately the nests become large and eventually consume real estate inside the bat house. Remove nests in the winter using a long, thin rod or stick only when bats are not present. Check carefully before cleaning because shadows can hide solitary bats in what first seems to be an empty box.

Diet

Little brown bats are insectivores, eating moths, wasps, beetles, gnats, mosquitoes, midges and mayflies, among others.[7] Since many of their preferred meals are insects with an aquatic life stage, such as mosquitoes, they prefer to roost near water. Brown bats forage near bodies of water and move in and out of adjacent vegatation.[8] Evening forages are done in groups and above the water. They echolocate to find their prey. They are particularly good at hunting insects when they are at close range and packed together. When hunting, little brown bats capture prey both by gleaning and by catching them in the air.[9] When in flight, bats scoop up the prey with their wings, while prey above water is directly grabbed with the mouth.
Brown bat do not claim feeding areas like a territory, however individuals frequently return to the same feeding sites where they have previously made successful catches.[4] When hunting swarms, brown bats usually select no more than two species. They feed on more species when they are scattered. If they do not catch any food, they will enter a torpor similar to hibernation that day, awakening at night to hunt again.
The bats' diet makes this species beneficial to agriculture as it eats many species of agricultural pests. Other than that, it can pollinate crops.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_brown_bat
 
Bees and Wasps generally have more benefits than negatives. Unless they're posing an immediate hazard your family I'd say leave them alone. We have some Wasp nests roughly an acre away from the house. We had some ground wasps setup camp inside a basement window well. They had to be done away with. I wish I could have moved them but in the end the safest course was some bee sealant / poison. Took about 3 coats over a week to do completely away with the colony. They do get really mad when you're hanging your head in a window well trying to hit their tiny hold with foam.
 
or you could adopt a small family of these adorable little fellers

honey+badger+3.JPG


they'll dig up wasps nests and it's my understanding they "don't care"...:D personally id go with the plants that they don't like first... as faethor points out... even angry wasps serve a function...
 
Ya, what you really want is to set loose a couple of crazy nastyass honey badgers in your back yard. In no time, pretty much everything else will be dead. You might wanna find another place to live as well.

 
Btw, when I had a wasp nest in my front basement window, I just sprinkled a bunch of chrysanthemum dust. Turns out chrysanthemums contain a natural neurotoxin for insects. Doesn't affect animals and birds, but ants and wasps go into a twitching fit until they die. Also, the toxin reacts with water, so once it gets damp or wet, it's no longer dangerous to anything. Worked great for me.
 
faethor said:
Bees and Wasps generally have more benefits than negatives. Unless they're posing an immediate hazard your family I'd say leave them alone.
Click to expand...

As mentioned, they are an immediate hazard because every time someone goes in the yard, they get attacked. Bees don't bother me at all. Our neighbor behind us has a old workshop with an enormous bee hive in it. Not once did a bee bother me. I just don't like being either stung or chased down the street every time I walk in my yard.
 
well... here's another thought... hang a couple bird feeders near to where you typically socialize... throw in a birdhouse/birdbath maybe too... keep the feeders full to some degree to attract the birds... then moderate filling the feeders around visits...

ultimately you need to find the nest... in my 40 plus years of doing construction work; i've seen some amazingly large critters crawl out of amazingly small holes... soffit and facia on house are some of the worst culprits and a good place to start looking... check soffit vents to make sure inner vent screen hasnt been worked up to allow entrance... rot spaces or even initial signs of water degradation are another good place to look for them... 1/8 inch hole at an inside corner of your facia could hide a colony so big it might damage the house to remove.... window wells and those escape hatches are another good place and there is testimonial to that already... if you have trees you'll wanna look in the crannies of splits... firewood piles....inside lower logs... even up on the roof around the chimney area, or in the tops of flu and vent caps... what i noticed about the ground dwellers was that the holes were usually about what a pencil would make on the eraser end... doesn't look like an ant lion hole where it goes down, it's just an open hole... they have a reveal around them about an inch in all directions where nothing grows but hole might be partially under a flatish rock ... if its in grass i've noticed that the area around the hole tends to sink a little, half inch or so, from the excavation underground... had a horrible issue with these little f'ers on a job in lincoln kansas... ill have to look through my pics and find some... homeowner was an elderly widowed lady and she couldn't even go out on back porch... we found the nests under the deck finally... we were going to be on 2 story ladders replacing windows and siding... i required them to all die before i did that...
 
or there is maybe this... although if your handy with paper mache, a ballon and a paintbrush

36-561_a.jpg


http://www.gardeners.com/Natural-Wa...ds-sku^36@ADL4561-adtype^PLA-adid^23773396478

Natural Wasp Deterrent

  • Deter wasps with no chemical sprays needed
  • Hang 4-12 feet from outdoor living area and 6-8 feet above the ground
  • Set of 2
Turn your deck or patio into a no-fly zone with these imitation wasp nests. Research has demonstrated that wasps are territorial and avoid other nests. Hang in a protected area under roof eaves or on a porch. Works for camping and picnicking too. Just hang and enjoy a wasp-free meal!​
 
cecilia said:
wow, this thread is fun! :banana:
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Ya, I never realized that we have experts on every conceivable topic on this forum! There's nothing we can't solve and we usually come up with 10 or so totally different solutions!
 
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