# WASPs under our deck....



## diyntn

We have a bad problem with wasps building under our deck. I am removing the decking and have already gotten stung. I have covered the top in plastic and bombed (just a bug bomb, couldn't find a wasp bomb) to no avail. They still are swarming underneath. 
I have managed to get 1/2 of the decking off. But the nests are still under there. I think I'm gonna attack it from afar better. A long pipe as a pry bar, rather than the standard pry bar.
Two questions:

1-do you have any suggestions on how to kill them before I take the decking off?

2-Is there anything that I can do as I redeck this thing, to prevent them from getting this bad again? We were thinking maybe putting landscape cloth underneath the decking planks. ?? I dunno, just shootin in the wind there.

Thanks,
Mark


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## vsheetz

I used to live where wasps were common to get under the eaves of the house and such - I kept a couple spray cans of wasp killer spray, which would shoot a directed spray 6' or better. Knocked them right down.

Long term keeping them from coming back I dunno - maybe the commercial exterminator services.


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## Scuba_Dave

For a insecticide bomb to be effective the entire are must be tented in, sides & all. Longer pry bar just means it will take them about 1 second longer to sting you
How far off the ground is the deck?

They will usually not fly in between the planks
They would have to crawl down - most will not do that
So enclosing the sides of the deck will eliminate their ability to fly in
Butt the new boards as close together as possible
As they dry they will leave a small gap for water drainage


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## rwa

you could paint the bottom side of your deck blue


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## diyntn

rwa said:


> you could paint the bottom side of your deck blue




why?


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## Thurman

I have a deck that is four (4) feet off the ground and have the wasp problem every year when it gets hot. I have one of those foggers that works off electricity, some work off the small propane tanks. The bug zapper liquid that goes in this machine will kill the wasps. The bottom of my deck is enclosed with lattice and I wait until just before dusk, and it's not windy, as this seems to be when they come home. I fog this area really good, walking around to ensure good coverage, the fog comes up between the spaces in the decking boards as it fogs, and gets any living creature under there. Yes, I have to do it every two-three weeks, but it's the only thing I've found that will kill them. I spray my bushes near the house to keep down mosquitoes and other stuff also. Good Luck, David Please post your general location.


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## Scuba_Dave

rwa said:


> you could paint the bottom side of your deck blue





diyntn said:


> why?


Refer to his avatar :laughing:

I have a fogger, works great
Neighbors thought my house was on fire one year


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## diyntn

Scuba_Dave said:


> Refer to his avatar :laughing:


Oh..LOL..I see.
I have finally, with the help of 3 people, (I got stung once) got the boards removed. OMG....It wasn't a few wasp nests, it was a wasp INFESTATION>...

There were no less than 25-30 nests under there, most still "LIVE". I can't believe we haven't been stung more. 
We didn't go out there a whole lot anyways.
So, I did get all the old boards off.
Now, I'm just troubled with how to make sure I've done all I can to prevent this recurring. It must be location. It's on a side of the house with no shade and gets a lot of sun. They must love that setup.


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## Blondesense

rwa said:


> you could paint the bottom side of your deck blue


There is an old wives tale that says if you paint your eaves sky blue wasps will not build nests under them. The idea being they see the sky blue paint as sky and not somewhere to build a nest.
No idea if it is effective or not.


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## diyntn

Blondesense said:


> There is an old wives tale that says if you paint your eaves sky blue wasps will not build nests under them. The idea being they see the sky blue paint as sky and not somewhere to build a nest.
> No idea if it is effective or not.


You know, seems like I've heard that before, but had forgotten.
But..under the deck it's dark...
maybe dark clouds might keep em away.
:wink:

But, I've read a lot online about this and it appears this is an ongoing problem.
A few are not a problem, but an INFESTATION like we had has got to be stopped before it get's that bad again. 
Guess it's going to take me just hunkering down and looking underneath the deck on occasion.....


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## rwa

another thing I have heard thru the years is to mix lime in the paint


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## Scuba_Dave

Well the back of my house will be blue - maybe find out


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## Yoyizit

If you knock the nest down they will abandon it within a morning.

A small torch or candle at the end of a 16' piece of thin lumber will do wonders for them. They don't see or think that well, believe me, so they will never think to follow the board. Don't try this with yellow jackets, though.

They fly with their stinger down so if you bat them out of the air be sure to strike from above. They fly slowly. If they then land on soft earth stepping on them usually only works temporarily.

If you jam a 2x4 into their nest it will immobilize most of them until you remove the 2x. Then they will be looking for revenge and most of them will be perfectly capable of flight. Half the fun of this is watching the bystanders scatter (and you along with them).

If you get stung under your eye it will take a day or so for the swelling to subside.


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## DUDE!

I try to use the garden hose, longer range, under a deck could be tough though, not sure if same with wasps, but they ( can't find they) say the bee's dont' return to same nest each year, might be why you had so many nests.

If stung on eye lid, takes couple days for swelling to go down.


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## Blondesense

I thought someone here mentioned cold weather but I don't see it now.
They do seem to be sluggish or less active when it is cold so you may want to plan your major annual maintenance attack when the temp is in the 50's. 

If you want to kill as many as possible you might also consider waiting until late dusk when they have all returned for the night. That way you get most if not all of them rather than having a lot of homeless guys buzzing around after you destroy their hive.


If they are yellow jackets, Move.


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## Scuba_Dave

I've had no problem getting rid of yellow jackets
One place they were in the ground
Dumped some gas down the hole & tossed a match
--not recommended for under your deck-- :laughing:

Other then that I just use the same spray
After a couple days they are either all dead or have moved
A skunk ripped apart the log after that


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## gma2rjc

Last summer two kids were playing with a R.C. car in my back yard. The older boy ran the car into a small bush next to the deck. Yellow Jackets started swarming from the nest underneath. 

The boys came running in the house and some of the bees followed them in. One little guy had 3 stings and the other had 2. 

Where the controller was left laying on the deck, the bees swarmed around it for over an hour. 

We never had a problem with them before that, except when someone was eating outside.

In a week or so, I'm going to cover the deck and the ground around it with big sheets of plastic. At night, I'll seal it up and set off some bug bombs. Hopefully it works.


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## Yoyizit

"With honey bees the toxic dose (LD50) of the venom is estimated to be 8.6 stings per pound of body weight."

I hate yellow jackets. They fly too fast to swat out of the air, they're aggressive, they'll follow you at least 100', and if you try to pick them up by pinching their wings together you'll likely get stung because they are very flexible at the waist.

But, here's a trick. 
I was at an outside table in a restaurant, and for some reason there were yellow jackets attracted to the table surface. 
You simply cover them with a paper napkin and they become helpless. 
Their stinger always points down, so with the tip of one finger you can crunch them or kill them, your choice.
If you crunch them, they spend the rest of the day repairing circuitry, fixing vexing software errors, trying to get new parts, etc., so they are pretty well occupied with internal matters. Or they just croak


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## shumakerscott

*Canadian trick*

I was told by my buddy to hang a salmon carcus with a bucket of water under it. The wasps will gorge on the fish and then fall into the bucket and die. Not tested by me just a tip. dorf dude...


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## Yoyizit

shumakerscott said:


> I was told by my buddy to hang a salmon carcus with a bucket of water under it. The wasps will gorge on the fish and then fall into the bucket and die. Not tested by me just a tip. dorf dude...


It's carcass, Herr Shumaker.


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## gma2rjc

Yellow jackets are supposedly the only bees that are attracted to food. 

The day that my two little guys got stung last year, I called a pest control company to come out and spray. Just to make sure they knew what kind of pest they were looking for, I caught one and put it in a ziploc baggie. Then I hung it on the fridge with a magnet so it wouldn't get lost. 

A few hours later, the older boy (11) walked up to it and picked it up. It stung his finger through the bag. That made the 3rd bee sting for him that day.


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## Scuba_Dave

I get stung I declare war :furious:
I love the smell of napalm in the morning


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## Chemist1961

For a long term wipeout, you may need to bate them. Borax, tuna and apple juice fermenting outside near their nest with a few drops of dish detergent. You can google this mixture under home made wasp traps. :thumbsup:

Put it in a jug with an inverted pop (soda) bottle top.... as in a funnel shaped . They fly in for the scent and die, in volume, kamikaze style. They follow the rotting tuna and the juice baking in the sun, but you won`t smell it. That is why they are dive bombing outdoor garbage cans at playgrounds and BBQs.

If you opt for torch tag, remember you are outnumbered. I would spray bomb into the opening at night when they are dormant. Most wasp spray has a long tragectory for a guy with nerves of steel or chainmail underwear:laughing:


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## Blondesense

Yoyizit said:


> I hate yellow jackets. They fly too fast to swat out of the air, they're aggressive, they'll follow you at least 100'


Heck, any you miss _will chase you into the next county to get even!_

We had an ongoing war with them when we lived in Oklahoma. Our solution? We moved. Okay, that wasn't the only reason we moved but I _am_ glad to get away from them.

.


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## Yoyizit

Blondesense said:


> Heck, We had an ongoing war with them when we lived in Oklahoma. If you try anything with the nest, you durn better make sure you get them all_ or they will chase you into the next county!_
> 
> We moved. Okay, that wasn't the only reason we moved but I _am_ glad to get away from them.


In my area they build a tunnel a foot or so long that leads to an underground chamber the size of a volleyball, so most the gasoline just burns in the tunnel and doesn't really affect their "homeland."

I think they need to take a course in anger management.


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## Scuba_Dave

Yoyizit said:


> In my area they build a tunnel a foot or so long that leads to an underground chamber the size of a volleyball, so most the gasoline just burns in the tunnel and doesn't really affect their "homeland."
> 
> I think they need to take a course in anger management.


Yeah, but with gasoline burning for 15 minutes I've yet to see any survive. They need to beathe too
:thumbup:


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## 47_47

Yoyizit said:


> In my area they build a tunnel a foot or so long that leads to an underground chamber the size of a volleyball, so most the gasoline just burns in the tunnel and doesn't really affect their "homeland."


I'm surprised you don't have a flame thrower.

Best cure for a wasp sting, put mud on it. It is readily available and the mud acts as a drawing salve to remove the toxin and stinger.


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## Yoyizit

47_47 said:


> I'm surprised you don't have a flame thrower.


The cops took it away!

I heard that Tesla built a machine that could be tuned to the resonant frequency of buildings, and he wrecked some buildings playing with this gadget. 
Now, that guy knew how to have fun! :thumbsup:


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## gma2rjc

A paste made with baking soda and water also helps bee stings.


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## Capt-Obvious

*Paint eaves light blue*

Painting the eaves light blue the color of the sky will deter wasps and birds to settle there. The are easy confused and think it is the sky.


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## ultimatesooner

I like to use the foaming wasp spray and give the nest a good coating at night.

Go back in ~5 minutes and they will all be on the ground dying


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## MarieSusan

*Wasp Nest*



diyntn said:


> We have a bad problem with wasps building under our deck. I am removing the decking and have already gotten stung. I have covered the top in plastic and bombed (just a bug bomb, couldn't find a wasp bomb) to no avail. They still are swarming underneath.
> I have managed to get 1/2 of the decking off. But the nests are still under there. I think I'm gonna attack it from afar better. A long pipe as a pry bar, rather than the standard pry bar.
> Two questions:
> 
> 1-do you have any suggestions on how to kill them before I take the decking off?
> 
> 2-Is there anything that I can do as I redeck this thing, to prevent them from getting this bad again? We were thinking maybe putting landscape cloth underneath the decking planks. ?? I dunno, just shootin in the wind there.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mark


Hi, hope you find my article of interest

Firstly you need to locate where the nest is for me that was not easy as it sounds, as I could not find the nest anywhere, it started off where one day I had 2 or 3 wasps flying around in my flat and it went on from there, all of a sudden from nowhere a wasp would appear and then another one, and then more and more.

It was the middle of summer and I had every window closed as I thought that was where they were coming in from, but that did not help, so as well as having a very hot flat this did not seem to be helping the situation. I then blocked up the air vents in the kitchen and bathroom as I thought they were coming in through there too, but that did not stop them. I was looking everywhere to try and locate how they were getting in and just could not work it out. I would get up in the morning and there would be between 6 to 10 wasps flying around my flat, sometimes more. I had a can of wasp spray in every room.

Eventually I called a Pest Controller out but even he could not locate the nest either, he too had looked everywhere, but he could just not locate how they were getting in. This was now getting serious as every day I would have more and more wasps to contend with and I hated them, I would be sat there watching the TV and they would just appear from nowhere and start dive bombing me.

This went on for nearly 2 weeks and one day I was in the kitchen and I saw one just about to go down the plug hole in the kitchen sink so I quickly turned the tap on until it went down and then put the plug in, and it was then when it struck me, that’s where they were coming from as there was nowhere else where they could get in, so I ran into the bathroom and put all the plugs in and that was the answer, from then on in I had no more wasps, the nest was in the drains which was not visible and that’s how they were getting in, so once I put all the plugs in that was the end of the wasps, but it was not a very nice experience at all.

This was quite an unusual situation, as to the location of the nest. Wasps usually make their nest in darker places such as eaves and in attics and most of the time the nests are easy to locate, outside they can make nests anywhere, again they would be in darker places, like in bushes and they are not usually visible, you will find that they would be right in the middle hidden away amongst the branches and leaves.

You should never ever go near a wasp nest, if they feel threatened they will sting you, if you do think you have a wasp nest you need to call one of our Pest Controllers who is trained to deal with these, never try to eradicate these yourself. Also another point to remember is once they have died they don’t go back to the same nest the following summer they only use it the one time, so if you do ever find an old nest and there does not seem to be any wasps about, the chances are it’s a dead nest and they will never return.
Wasp nests can still be active in the winter months too, it is not unusual to have an active nest in December and January, however these will be very few and far between, this is due to the fact that unlike bees they have not yet developed methods to store food for the winter months.

Before this happens though new queen bees and males have been developed and have swarmed out of the colony to mate, the male soon dies after mating, but the young fertilised females will search for a sheltered spot where they can spend the winter, dormant queens can be often found in outhouses and lofts during the winter.

_Spam Advertising is not allowed on this site_


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## stuart45

My wife found a wasps next in a hole in the garden. She told me to get some ant killer on the way home from work and put it down the nest to get rid of them. I forget to get it, but just pushed a load of soil down the hole and thought that would stop them and told her I had used ant killer and finished them off. Overnight the little gits had dug out the hole again and when my wife went near it to take out some weeds with a trowel she thought it was safe. However when they saw her with the trowel they must have thought it was her that buried them and came out and attacked her. She looked like she was fighting an invisible Jackie Chan, but only got stung once. Wish I'd had the camera at the time:laughing:
She didn't see the funny side at first and didn't speak to me all day, which wasn't a bad result. I look at wasps in a different light now, might even take them a bowl of sugar tonight.


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## hyunelan2

On a related topic - if I wait until after the freeze... like a deep freeze... like February, and I knock the nests down, will the wasps be dormant/dead/hibernating? Since I took care of them under the lip of my pool, they have since started to build on the eves of the house. The house is too high for most sprays that I've had, and I don't want to be standing on a ladder if they decide it's time to fight.


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## High Gear

Ha Ha fun read.

We ( my neighbor and I)had an infestation of giant cicada killer wasps here last year.

They love bare ground to burrow in and part of my and neighbors backyard that we were working on landscaping in was looking like swiss cheese.

We had fun with that 250,000 btu weed burner I picked up!


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## gma2rjc

High Gear, do you live in a warm climate where they can keep building without the winter killing them off?


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## gilligan

hyunelan2 said:


> On a related topic - if I wait until after the freeze... like a deep freeze... like February, and I knock the nests down, will the wasps be dormant/dead/hibernating? Since I took care of them under the lip of my pool, they have since started to build on the eves of the house. The house is too high for most sprays that I've had, and I don't want to be standing on a ladder if they decide it's time to fight.


It looks like that should be the safest time to tackle it. Only the queens live through winter, and they generally find more protected places than the nest to hibernate.



> *Life Cycle of Wasps*
> 
> Wasps undergo an annual cycle, and only queens that have mated in the fall or early winter survive. These queens spend the winter in protected sites, such as under bark, stones, shutters, shingles, rodent dens, attics, and wall voids.
> 
> In the spring, a queen emerges to establish a colony, laying from 10 to 20 eggs. Because no workers are yet present to help her raise her brood she alone has the burden of foraging for food, feeding the young, and collecting wood from which she manufactures the paper used in nest construction.
> 
> With the maturation of this first brood of workers, the queen gives up all her duties except that of egg laying. She remains in the nest, and the workers forage for food and wood, feed the young, and enlarge, repair, and defend the nest. At the end of the summer, nests have multiple combs, thousands of cells, and thousands of workers, and the colony then begins to produce males and new queens, which fly out and mate. The males die after mating and the mated females seek overwintering sites. The workers and original founding queen of the colony do not survive the winter. In the spring the cycle begins again.
> 
> http://www.propestcontroller.com/pests_yellow_jackets.php


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## High Gear

gma2rjc said:


> High Gear, do you live in a warm climate where they can keep building without the winter killing them off?


I'm just south of the chedder curtain halfway from chi town to the mississsip.

I could use a little global warming here lately.:laughing:


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## Kap

Blondesense said:


> There is an old wives tale that says if you paint your eaves sky blue wasps will not build nests under them. The idea being they see the sky blue paint as sky and not somewhere to build a nest.
> No idea if it is effective or not.


It's not.


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## The Bug Doctor

Sounds like paper wasps. A pump up sprayer on 'fan' or cone spray will do the trick. If you hit them with a stream or jet of spray they will defend but a light fan spray and they just walk around a bit till they drop. For big decks you either need to have a long wand or do the outer nests first and work your way in every couple of days getting more of them. Don't be foolish wear something protective and make sure they are paper wasps.......Yellow jackets, bees or bald faced hornets will tear you up!
Google paper wasps or umbrella wasps to see if they match or look at my homepage on my profile. I write articles on this stuff quite a bit. And I don't even sell anything!


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