How Do You Know If You Have Wasps in Greenwich?

Wasps in the Garden Are Not a Nest

Worker wasps forage a long way from home. A few in the garden on a warm afternoon, wasps around a fallen apple, wasps at a bin or a drink, wasps at the window on the inside - none of that means the nest is on your property, and in late summer it very often means nothing more than that it is late summer.

What indicates a nest is not the number of wasps. It is the pattern.

The One Test That Settles It

Stand somewhere safe with a view of the building or the garden and watch for five minutes. You are looking for one thing: a steady two-way stream of wasps going into and out of a single point.

That is a nest entrance, and it is unmistakable once you see it. Wasps arriving from different directions and converging on one spot, disappearing into it, and others emerging and heading off. Not one or two - a continuous traffic, like an airport approach.

If you cannot find a point like that, you probably do not have a nest on your property. Foraging wasps wander; nesting wasps commute.

Where to Watch

Follow the traffic. Wasps commuting along a fixed line across a garden are going somewhere, and the line points at it. The usual destinations on a domestic property:

• A gap at a soffit, fascia or roof verge - the commonest on a house, and often two storeys up.
• An air brick, or a hole in old pointing.
• Under a roof tile, particularly at an edge or a valley.
• Inside a shed, garage or outbuilding roof.
• A compost bin, a bank of soil, or a gap under decking.
• Inside a thick hedge - easy to miss and easy to walk into.
• Behind cladding, signage or a bargeboard.

The Other Signs

1. Wasps appearing indoors, repeatedly, in one room. Usually a nest in the roof void or the cavity adjacent to that room, with a few finding their way through.
2. Scratching or rustling from inside a wall or ceiling. A nest being built and extended makes a surprising amount of noise, and people regularly report it as mice.
3. A visible papery grey structure. In a loft, shed, garage or hedge. Conclusive - but see below on whether it is live.
4. A patch of bare timber on a fence or shed. Wasps strip wood fibre to build with, leaving faint parallel scrape marks. It means a nest nearby, though not necessarily on your property.

Live Nest or Old Nest?

This matters because an old nest needs nothing doing and people pay to have them treated every year.

A wasp nest is used for a single season. The colony dies off in autumn and the nest is never reoccupied the following year. So a grey papery nest found in a loft in February, with no wasps around it, is a dead nest. It is not going to wake up in spring. Removing it is optional and cosmetic.

A live nest has traffic. If there is no traffic and it is not summer, it is over.

Wasp, Bee or Hornet?

Worth establishing before you book, because the answer changes what should happen.

• Common wasp: bright yellow and black, smooth-looking, narrow waist. Interested in your food and drink in late summer.
• Honey bee: browner, hairier, and far less interested in you. A swarm hanging in a cluster is a job for a beekeeper, not a pest controller, and we will tell you so.
• Bumblebee: large, round, very hairy. Nests are small, short-lived and rarely need anything doing at all.
• Hornet: noticeably larger than a wasp and more brown and orange. Less aggressive than reputation suggests, though a nest close to a door or a play area is still worth dealing with.

If you are not sure, a photograph sent with the enquiry costs nothing and occasionally saves you a treatment you did not need.

When the Nest Is Not Yours

It happens regularly, particularly in terraced streets. The traffic line runs across your garden and over the fence, or the entrance turns out to be in the neighbouring roofline.

In that situation treating your property achieves nothing - the nest gets treated where its entrance is, so it needs the cooperation of whoever owns that frontage. Tell us what you have watched and we will explain what we think is happening. It is a common situation and it is usually resolved quickly once the right person is asked.

When to Act Quickly

• The nest entrance is near a door, a path, a play area or outdoor seating.
• Anyone at the property has a known sting allergy - in which case stay away from it entirely and say so at the booking.
• Wasps are getting into the living space repeatedly.
• It is early in the season. An early nest is small; the same nest in August is not.

If Somebody at the Property Has a Sting Allergy

This changes the priority and it changes the instructions, so it belongs at the top of the enquiry rather than mentioned in passing.

• Do not go looking for the nest. The watching described above is for somebody else in the household. Identification can wait; exposure cannot.
• Do not attempt any DIY treatment. Under any circumstances.
• Keep away from the flight line as well as the nest. The route wasps take to and from the entrance is where most incidental stings happen.
• Say it when you book. It affects how and when the visit is planned and what precautions are taken.

If somebody is stung and has a known allergy, that is a medical matter and needs the appropriate emergency response - not a call to a pest controller.