Wasps Identification Greenwich: What Signs Should You Look For?

The Traffic Line

What to look for: wasps crossing the same stretch of air repeatedly, in a consistent direction, over several minutes. Not wandering - commuting.

What it tells you: the direction of the nest, which is the single most useful piece of information you can gather. Follow the line to where it converges and you will find the entrance.

What it rules out: wasps moving randomly around a garden, at flowers, at fallen fruit or at a bin are foraging, and foraging tells you nothing about where they live.

The Entrance

What to look for: a steady two-way stream in and out of one specific point - a gap at a soffit, an air brick, a hole in pointing, under a tile, a gap under decking, an opening in a bank of soil.

What it tells you: everything. This is the thing that gets treated, and its location is the only detail that genuinely matters when you book. It is also the reason the price does not change with height - the treatment goes to the entrance wherever it happens to be.

What it rules out: a single wasp entering a gap once is not an entrance. You are looking for continuous traffic.

The Nest Itself

What to look for: a grey or pale brown papery structure with a swirled, layered surface, like coarse marbled paper. In a loft, shed, garage or outbuilding it may be fully visible; in a wall or roof void you will never see it at all.

What it tells you: the size tells you roughly where in the season you are, which is worth knowing because it changes how assertive the colony is:

What it rules out: a nest with no traffic outside summer is a dead nest from a previous season and needs nothing doing. Nests are never reoccupied.

Sound

What to look for: scratching, rustling or a papery rasping from inside a wall, ceiling or roof void. Sometimes a low hum in a quiet room with a large nest close by.

What it tells you: that a nest is being built or extended inside the structure. Wasps chew and shape material continuously as the nest grows.

What it rules out: very little on its own - this is reported to us as mice regularly. The way to separate them is to go outside and look for traffic at an opening on that wall.

Scrape Marks on Timber

What to look for: pale patches on a fence panel, a shed, a bench or a garden table, with faint parallel scrapes across the grain, as though the surface has been sanded in narrow strips.

What it tells you: wasps are stripping wood fibre to build with, so there is a nest within foraging range. It does not tell you the nest is on your property.

Wasps Indoors

What to look for: wasps appearing repeatedly in one particular room, especially at a window, and especially if the room is under a roof or against an external wall.

What it tells you: a nest in the roof void or cavity next to that room, with a proportion finding their way through into the living space. One or two wasps indoors across a summer is ordinary; several a day in the same room is not.

Telling a Wasp From Four Other Things

• Honey bee. Browner, hairier, thicker-waisted, and far less interested in your food. A swarm hanging in a dense cluster on a branch or a wall is a beekeeper's job - tell us and we will say so rather than treat it.
• Bumblebee. Large, round and very hairy. Nests are small, short-lived and generally need nothing doing.
• Hornet. Noticeably bigger than a common wasp, more brown and orange than yellow and black. Less aggressive than its reputation, but a nest beside a door or a play area is still worth dealing with.
• Hoverfly. Yellow and black and a very good wasp mimic, but it hovers in one spot in a way a wasp does not, and it has no sting at all.

What the Signs Tell Us Before We Arrive

The three details worth including in an enquiry, because between them they determine how the visit is planned:

1. Where the entrance is, as precisely as you can - soffit, air brick, shed roof, ground.
2. Roughly how high. It does not change the price and it does change what gets brought.
3. Whether anyone at the property has a sting allergy.

Where Nests Turn Up, by Building Type

Knowing what to check first saves a great deal of standing in the garden.

On a house with a shed and a garage, start there. A colony that had a choice between a roof three storeys up and a shed roof at head height frequently took the shed.