Wasps are perceived as aggressive and destructive and that is not wrong. They swarm beehives and kill everything. The queen, the workers, the grubs and the honey. They take the royal jelly back to the hive and present it to their own queen. This makes them look pretty bad in the eyes of people who love bees and wasps do sometimes attack bee farms, causing thousands of dollars in damage and losses. However, they are fantastic pollinators. There are thousands of plants that only the wasp can pollinate with their long bodies. Wasps are not a danger to humans unless they are living right on top of each other. If there is a wasp nest on your property far enough away that they do not bother you then let them be. They will help your garden and leave you alone because you leave them alone. The issue starts when there is a nest near or, even more dangerous, on or in your house. Wasps can make nests in trees, in the ground and even inside the walls of a house. One of their favourite places to build a nest is behind siding, aluminum is best but vinyl works as well.
They can penetrate almost any opening like soffits and fascia vents gaining access to your attic. If they manage to get into your home, to a place that is warm in the winter, they no longer need to follow their yearly life cycle. They can continue growing endlessly building something called a super nest which can have multiple queens and fill large spaces with up to millions of wasps. This can easily make your home unlivable. The process often begins with the wasps building a nest in the wall in the early summer. You may not know they are there because in the summer they are focused on building the nest and raising more wasps laid by the queen. When the fall comes they stop working and are free to do as they please. This means finding sweet things like honey to eat. Humans have a lot of sweet things in their homes and if the wasps are in the walls and the fall is nearly over and the cold air has arrived they will not leave to find honey, they will stay and try to get into your house to gain access to your pantry. This is a serious shock to people who did not know there was a nest there in the first place. They will be living their lives and then suddenly wasps will start burrowing through the drywall. This can also occur if you find an opening the wasps are using and instead of treating the nest through the hole you seal it thinking that will solve the issue. It absolutely will not and will make it much worse. The wasps will now be trapped inside the house with you and they will have to drill through the walls to survive. They will be exceptionally aggressive and will sting whatever they perceive to be in their way.
If you have a wasp nest, or you want to find out if one is on your property you can find out by hanging a wasp trap. Mix together apple cider vinegar, sugar or honey and water together, about a cup of each, sugar and water and two cups of the vinegar. Stir it until the sugar or honey dissolves and then pour it into plastic jugs. Cut a small hole in the top of the jug and keep the cap screwed on tight. The hole should be smaller than a quarter. Wasps will enter but not be able to escape, when they eat the liquid because it smells sweet they will die from the vinegar. If you find more than a couple in the trap you may have a nest on your property, if the trap is almost full you will probably want to call a professional exterminator. If you can find the nest then there are things you can do. There are domestic products that can kill wasps in strange places but they are dangerous to use as the wasps will realize what you are doing and attack you. The best thing you can do on your own is to make traps to keep them at bay and call an exterminator if they start getting aggressive or plentiful.
