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How to kill wasps around the home

Our neighborhood has a lot of wasps. They build small nests and find their way into all the protective hideouts provided by vinyl siding, drip edges, gutters and flashing. I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to the wasps unless they are building a nest very close to people such as on my deck or front porch. While two of my children were stung last year, the wasps are generally not aggressive and stay out of our way. They are also supposed to eat other insects which is a good thing.

Perhaps my permissive “live and let live” policy went a little  far. These creatures began building more nests around the home and bothering my wife and kids who were trying to enjoy the outdoors. It was time to address the  problem and eliminate the  nests.

First, I used binoculars to observed the swarming wasps during the day when they are most active so I could see them flying in of out of their disguised homes. I then crept out one of our second story windows during the evening to get a closer look and access to their nests. This method can be very dangerous if you have a steep roof. You can either slip off the roof on your own or with the aid of angry wasps.

While on the roof, I used an Ortho Home Defense product which I purchased at True Value Hardware.  It works great and does not seem to stain the siding. It has the ability to spray at areas that are 12-15 feet away and its foam prevents the wasps from making a counter attack.

I identified nests in many areas including those shown here:

The largest nest was in the rain downspout. I could not believe wasps could survive the water runoff but the nest was cleverly built on the inside of the spout away from the water which washes down the outside of the spout. If you look closely you can see the nest in the down spout:

When I was at the True Value store, I picked up a Rescue WHY trap for wasps, hornets and yellow jackets. I was a little nervous about using the chemical spray in first floor areas outside where people like to hang out so I hung this trap above the porch. After about a week of it being ignored, the wasps finally started climbing in (perhaps because they no longer had other homes to return to…). I am going to keep using the Rescue trap and see if it continues to eliminate the remaining Wasps.

We were one of the bloggers selected by True Value to work on the DIY Squad. We have been compensated for our time commitment to the program as well as our writing about our experience. We have also been compensated for the materials needed for our DIY project. However, our opinions are entirely our own and we have not been paid to publish positive comments.