Wasps Around Your Guttering and Fascias? How to Find the Nest in Quorn
A detached garage or outbuilding with a timber fascia is a favourite with nest-building wasps, and it is often months before anyone looks up at it.
The building you forget to look at
The house gets checked and painted; the garage at the end of the drive often does not. Detached garages, workshops, summerhouses and sheds frequently have timber fascias and an open or lightly boarded overhang, and they stand quiet for days at a time. That is just what a queen wasp wants in spring: a dry, undisturbed cavity with a bit of warmth from the sun.
A nest in an outbuilding can grow unnoticed for weeks because nobody is walking past it all day. By the time you open the up-and-over door on a warm August afternoon, the colony may be at full strength and the entrance busy. Residents in a village such as Quorn, where many properties have a garage or workshop beside the house, may find the first sign is a wasp in the car.
Another reason these buildings suit nesting wasps is that the cavity behind a single skin of timber is often dry and warm in summer, with little human traffic to disturb it. Wasps need very little room at the start, and a gap the width of a pencil is enough for a queen to begin a small paper nest.
Clues you can read from the doorway
You do not need to go inside or under the overhang to learn a lot. Stand at the side of the drive and look along the roofline of the outbuilding.
- wasps entering a gap at the corner where the fascia meets the wall
- a thin brown stain or pale scraps of chewed timber on the board
- insects coming out from beneath the edge of a roof sheet
- wasps bumping against the inside of a garage window, which may mean they have found a way into the building
If the roofline looks tatty, with sagging boards, flaking paint or exposed timber ends, that is probably where they got in. These are signs of weathering, not of anything you did wrong.
It also helps to walk around the whole outbuilding once, slowly and at a distance, rather than staring at one side. Entrances are sometimes on the face you seldom see, such as the side against a fence or hedge.
Why not just check it quickly with a ladder?
A low outbuilding feels safe to approach, because the roof is within reach and you are only a step or two off the ground. That feeling is exactly why people take chances at them. Standing on a wheelie bin, a stool or the roof of a car to peer into an eaves gap puts your face at the entrance, and a colony of several thousand does not need much provoking.
The safest approach is to treat the whole front of the building as out of bounds until the nest has been dealt with. Park elsewhere, keep the garage door shut, and avoid using lawnmowers or strimmers close to the walls, as the noise and vibration can rouse the colony.
If you keep anything valuable inside, such as tools, bikes or a freezer, resist the urge to go in and fetch it. It can wait a day.
Keep the cars, bins and garden tools away from the wall while you wait. If you need to reach the garage for something essential, use another door or go in at a time when the weather is cool and cloudy and fewer wasps are flying, and even then move gently.
When wasps have got inside the building
Sometimes the entrance is on the inside, through a gap above a door or where the roof meets a wall plate. If wasps are circling lights or crawling over the ceiling, shut the door and leave them be. Opening doors and windows to let them out rarely works well, because wasps entering and leaving the same hole are not the same ones that are drifting around.
Tell us when you ring if there is a window, hatch or vent that opens into the space. That detail helps the technician decide where to approach from.
A garage with a window that has a small gap or a vent can let wasps drift in from the nest. A quiet room with a closed door is safer than one where wasps are repeatedly disturbed.
Arranging treatment
A single wasp nest is treated for a fixed £95 per nest. If there is a second nest on the property, perhaps one in the house and one in the garage, the extra nest is £35 more. There is no call-out charge, we work seven days a week and offer same-day service, and we cover domestic and commercial premises. The technician who attends is trained, and the work is fully insured.
Ring 0116 214 9259 or send the booking form on the contact page. The price is confirmed on the phone before anybody visits, and nothing happens without your agreement. If you or someone in the household is allergic to stings, say so when you book.
Because we cover the village and surrounding villages, it helps if you give the road name and tell us how to reach the building, for instance if it is down a long drive or behind a locked gate.
Making the outbuilding less appealing
After the wasps have gone, spend a little time on the outbuilding itself. Replace rotten sections of board, close open joints and look at whether the overhang has gaps that let insects into the roof. Fresh paint or wood treatment on bare timber also stops it weathering into gaps again.
If the building belongs to a business or is let to a tenant, your lease or tenancy agreement will say who is responsible for repairs and for pest work, so check it. Whatever the answer, a quick walk round each spring helps. Do it on a mild day from the ground, looking for tiny insects landing at one spot, and you will probably catch trouble while the colony is still small.
Doing these small jobs in the cooler months is far more comfortable than doing them in the middle of a wasp season, and it keeps repairs from becoming urgent.
Wasps on your property in Quorn?
Fixed price £95 per nest, no call-out charge, same-day service available.