Had one myself a few years back, out in the garage. Thankfully, the occupants kept to themselves, and the place came with full maintenance, so it was just a matter of giving the owners a call, and it was sorted out promptly. Pity, in a way - it was quite artistic, with various stripes of widely different shades, like some Easter egg Giger might have produced in the 60s. =:)
Look who's back. :-) I might be leaning towards having some professional have a whack at it. The thought of a thousand angry wasps (not an exaggeration) appearing if things go wrong is more than enough to give me pause.
It survived the winter in good shape! We had one about that size growing on the house eves: I had to go up at night with two cans of wasp spray to saturate it. Like in "The Shining" (the book), it didn't kill them all...
It did. And it would have to have been there since the fall at least. On the other hand, I've yet to see any life around the nest, and it was a harsh winter. Could it be that they didn't survive?
From everything I've read online, only the queen(s) survive winter, through hibernation. You might be able to remove the nest carefully on a cold day (I don't think bees like to fly at below 10ºC), or just poke a hole into it at night and shoot into it with liquid wasp spray (vs the foam). If you use a flashlight to work with the nest, I recommend setting it on a surface somewhere away from you so that if there is activity they won't fly toward you but toward beam, instead. The big nest I killed was comprised of white-faced (baldfaced) wasps.
We had another wasp nest (classic yellow jackets) under the front steps (hollow concrete formed steps) and they were tough to eradicate. I kept spraying around the edges where I'd see them emerge, and must have finally fumed them all to death by late August last summer.
Thanks for the info! It looks like a little research, even into wasps, is a good thing. :-) And so yes, it would appear that there should only be one wasp left in the nest, but a big one. The internal structure is also a consideration in removing it - it should be constructed in a series of layers of honeycombs, enshrouded in a lot of layers of paper overlapping so as to keep the rain out. We'll probably proceed on our own, on a really cold morning.
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It'll get below freezing again next week to deal with it.
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Had one myself a few years back, out in the garage. Thankfully, the occupants kept to themselves, and the place came with full maintenance, so it was just a matter of giving the owners a call, and it was sorted out promptly. Pity, in a way - it was quite artistic, with various stripes of widely different shades, like some Easter egg Giger might have produced in the 60s. =:)
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I might be leaning towards having some professional have a whack at it. The thought of a thousand angry wasps (not an exaggeration) appearing if things go wrong is more than enough to give me pause.
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It did. And it would have to have been there since the fall at least.
On the other hand, I've yet to see any life around the nest, and it was a harsh winter. Could it be that they didn't survive?
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We had another wasp nest (classic yellow jackets) under the front steps (hollow concrete formed steps) and they were tough to eradicate. I kept spraying around the edges where I'd see them emerge, and must have finally fumed them all to death by late August last summer.
The word 'wasp' just makes me shudder...
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It looks like a little research, even into wasps, is a good thing. :-)
And so yes, it would appear that there should only be one wasp left in the nest, but a big one.
The internal structure is also a consideration in removing it - it should be constructed in a series of layers of honeycombs, enshrouded in a lot of layers of paper overlapping so as to keep the rain out.
We'll probably proceed on our own, on a really cold morning.
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