Why Are Wasps Flying Into Your Lovell Park Home? Common Causes and Solutions
If wasps always seem to end up in the kitchen, the room itself is probably sending out the invitation; here is how to tell and what to change.
Always the kitchen
You open the kitchen window while the kettle boils, and a wasp is already tapping at the glass above the sink. You let it out. The next morning another one is on the fruit bowl. Nobody has seen them in the lounge or the bedrooms; it is only ever the kitchen. That pattern is a useful clue in its own right.
Kitchens give off more scent than any other room in the house. Sugar, fat, cooked meat, fruit and the warm air from an extractor or oven all travel a long way on a breeze. If you are in Lovell Park or anywhere else with houses and flats close together, the smell can reach insects that you would never see in your garden.
Wasps that appear in just one room are usually following food. Wasps that appear everywhere are more likely to be coming from a nest. Start with the kitchen and work outward.
The usual suspects on the worktop
Go round the room as though you were a wasp with a good nose. The common attractions are:
- a fruit bowl, especially with bruised or overripe fruit
- open jam, honey, syrup or cake
- a half-drunk can, a child's juice cup or a glass of wine left overnight
- a sticky draining board or an unrinsed pan
- pet food bowls with meat or fish in them
- a kitchen bin without a tight lid, or a food waste caddy
- bottles waiting by the sink for recycling
Each of these is easy to fix. Keep fruit covered or in the fridge during the warm months, wipe up spills and rinse containers as soon as they are empty. Wash pet bowls after each meal rather than leaving them down.
Think about the less obvious sources as well. A baby's bottle with milk residue, a blender jug that has not been rinsed, a compost pot under the sink and the underside of a bin lid can all hold enough scent to be noticed outdoors. A ten-minute wipe-down of these spots does more than any amount of waving a tea towel at wasps.
Cooking, extractors and open vents
Air leaving the house carries cooking smells outwards, and a wasp that picks up the scent can fly straight up the stream towards its source. If your extractor vent, a window beside the hob or a back door opens onto a yard, those are the routes it will try.
Fit a mesh over a window that you open when cooking. If your cooker hood vents through the wall, check that the outer cover closes properly when the fan is off, because a flap stuck open lets insects in. Also look at the gap around the pipe where it passes through the wall; a nest sometimes starts in a hole like that.
Meat smells matter especially early in summer, when workers hunt protein for the grubs. Barbecued or roasted meat left uncovered in the kitchen is a stronger draw than most people expect.
Autumn changes the picture
Later in the year the colony has less to do, and the workers go looking for sugar themselves instead of bringing food home. That is the reason wasps seem more persistent around a fruit bowl or a sticky cup in September than they did in June. They can be slower and more irritable, and that makes them more likely to sting if you press one against skin.
If you find one on a drink, do not drink without looking. Wasps get into cans and bottles, so look before you sip. Use a clear glass, a cover or a straw and check first.
When the wasps come in after the food and then leave, the problem is the food. Remove it and the callers fall away.
A short routine at the end of each day helps through the wasp season: wash up, wipe the surfaces, empty the food waste, rinse the recycling and shut the lid on everything. It takes very little time, and it also helps against ants and flies.
Signs that something larger is happening
Be suspicious of a nest when the visits continue after you have cleared the kitchen. Look for wasps arriving all day from the same direction, wasps showing up in a second room, buzzing from behind a wall, ceiling or cupboard, or a stream of insects at the outside of the house at one gap.
A colony starts from late April depending on the weather and grows through summer. By August it can hold 2,000 to 10,000 wasps or more, and at that size the foragers can overwhelm a household's food controls however careful you are.
Avoid sealing a hole or trying to knock a nest down. Wasps can swarm and sting when they feel threatened, and the people who are hurt are usually those who tried it themselves.
If you can, note the time of day when the traffic is heaviest and the part of the building it seems to come from. Take a photograph from a safe distance through a window if that is possible. This helps us to understand where the nest might be before the technician arrives.
What happens when you book
Our wasp nest treatment is a fixed £90 per nest, with £35 for an additional nest at the same property. There is no call-out charge, we are open seven days a week, and same-day visits are available. We agree the price with you on the phone before the technician visits, and we do no work until you say it is fine.
Ring 0113 347 0014, or fill in the form on the contact page. Let us know where the wasps seem to come from and if anyone in the family reacts badly to stings. The technician is trained and fully insured, and we treat both homes and commercial premises. Ask at booking whether the empty nest can be taken down afterwards.
Wasps on your property in Lovell Park?
Fixed price £90 per nest, no call-out charge, same-day service available.