Some of you are having an Interesting time with wasps. Anne, your story axes the prize I think. Did you have to get an exterminator out? And somebody to repair the ceiling? Best time to spray wasps is in late evening, just at dark when they have returned to their nest for the night. Soak that nest and area good. I haven’t seen a wasp or bee around here all summer. Knock on wood. Maybe because the yard was sprayed the past two years.
Sue, we lived in quite a rural area up there in the Sierra foothills, about forty miles from "town". We had a small grocery store, and a hardware store in our tiny community - but exterminator companies? Um. . . not so much. Few exterminators either then, or even today, are willing to make an 80-mile-round-trip to spray a wasp's nest.
That is, without charging a $$bundle$$ - and we definitely didn't have a bundle to spare in those days. Calling out an exterminator just wasn't an option.
What I did - once I got my courage up (I think I remember I let a day or two go by) is that I went up to the hardware store and got a can of wasp spray, rubber gloves, and a mask, got back up on my kitchen chair with a pointy knife and kind of drilled a small hole in the middle of the paper plate, being careful not to dislodge the plate, and (with gloves and mask on) gave the can a good shake and sprayed quickly into the hole before the wasps had time to even think about trying to get me.
The nozzle on the can in those days was about the size of a nozzle on a spray paint can, so this was easy to do, although it wouldn't spray very well when being held almost sideways.
Once the can was at the point it needed to be shaken again, I pulled the can away from the hole and quickly put a another piece of tape (that I had at the ready) back over the hole.
The next day I did the same thing again. I then waited a week or so to see what might happen, and (when nothing did) I very carefully - and with a LOT of trepidation - peeled back a side of the paper plate. No action was seen or heard. A lot dead wasps fell out (I just vacuumed them up from the floor, then put the nozzle part of the vacuum into the hole to get the rest of the corpses) and then, after waiting a few more minutes, I reached in and removed the nest.
The remains looked something like this (not my photo, just an example):
Next, I went outside and caulked closed the tiny crack in the siding that they had found to get in. Then I stuffed some fiberglass insulation into the hole - to fill the space.
Sue, as I am sure you know with your wonderful handy-person skills, sheetrock is pretty easy to repair. I just cut back the sides of the hole until I was at solid sheetrock, I then cut circular piece out of some old sheetrock that was out in the barn (LOL - when you live in a rural area, a person tends not to throw stuff away, but to keep it "just in case").
I then fit the piece into the hole, then covered everything with sheetrock tape and sheetrock "mud" (plaster). Once it dried, I sanded the area down, painted it, and although I could always tell where the wasp hole had been, it really wasn't very noticeable.
JudyJB wrote:So, the lesson we learned yesterday (or today) was not to stick your finger into stuff if you don't know what it is. (Congratulations on your quick fix! And I would not have had a stool handy or thought of grabbing a paper plate and tape!!) Also, I have one of those ultraviolet flashlights you can use in the desert to find scorpions, but I am afraid to use it on the basis of it is better to not know they are around!!
LOL. Judy, the problem was, I just wasn't thinking too much.
What I
was doing was just wondering why the paint on the ceiling had formed such a strange looking blister all of a sudden. I was thinking "roof leak" or maybe "defective paint". Which is why I reached to touch it - to see if it was damp - although it hadn't been raining.
It never in a million years would have crossed my mind that what I was looking at was wasp damage.
It wasn't a stool that I grabbed - our old-fashioned wooden kitchen table was in the kitchen, and I just grabbed one of the kitchen table chairs. I don't know how I thought of a paper plate and tape (it was a blessing that both were near to hand in the kitchen cupboard) - all I could think of was a nasty cloud of hundreds, if not thousands, of flying, buzzing, aggressive, and angry stinging wasps filling up my entire house, floor to ceiling.
Now
that would have been a
major problem!!
In truth, had they gotten loose in my house - it was a very small house, about 650 sq. ft. - I really don't know what I would have done.
Anne