Why Are Wasps Flying Into Your Morley Home? Common Causes and Solutions
With children, pets or an allergic family member at home, wasps indoors feel more serious. This guide covers how to keep everyone safe and when to get help.
Wasps indoors and the people who live there
Wasps come into houses for ordinary reasons, mainly food smells, open doors and, sometimes, a nest nearby. What changes from home to home is who is affected. A single wasp is a minor irritation to some adults and a real worry in a household with a toddler, a dog that snaps at things, or someone with a known allergy to stings.
So the best way to think about wasps in a family home is to separate two questions. The first is why they are coming in, which is about food, openings and nests. The second is how to keep people safe while that is sorted out. In Morley, as anywhere else, the second question deserves as much attention as the first, because stings generally happen when someone surprises a wasp, not when a wasp goes looking for a victim.
The advice below covers both, starting with what to do on the day a wasp is in the room.
Parents often ask whether it is safe to carry on with ordinary summer life. The answer is yes, as long as you take a few sensible precautions and avoid any area where the wasps are clearly gathering.
A wasp is in the room: what to do
Stay calm and speak quietly. Children copy adult reactions, and a screaming adult is a good way to make a child run and flap.
- Move everyone slowly out of the room if possible, and close the door.
- Open the window as wide as it goes before you leave, so the wasp can find the way outside.
- Do not swat. A swat that misses will make the wasp defensive.
- If a wasp lands on a person, tell them to stay still or brush it off gently and walk away.
- Keep food and drinks covered. Check cups, bottles and straws before drinking, especially with young children, as a wasp can crawl into a drink unnoticed.
- Pets should be kept out of the room. Dogs and cats like to chase moving insects and are often stung on the nose or paw.
Come back after ten or fifteen minutes. If the wasp is still there, try again with the window open, and keep the room quiet.
Looking after someone who has been stung
For most people a sting is painful and settles. Wash the area with soap and water, remove the sting if you can see it, using a fingernail or the edge of a card to scrape it out, and apply a cold pack or a cloth with cold water for a few minutes. Keep an eye on the area for the next few hours.
A small number of people have a serious allergic reaction. Call 999 straight away if there is swelling of the face, lips or throat, wheezing or difficulty breathing, dizziness or a widespread rash. Do not wait to see if it gets better.
If someone in your household is known to be allergic, speak to your GP about it, and when you call us to book a visit tell us so that we can take it into account. Make sure that the person is away from the affected area when the technician arrives, and that everyone in the house knows where the wasps have been seen.
Pets that are stung and show swelling around the face or difficulty breathing need a vet quickly.
Make the house less attractive
Once the immediate situation has settled, look at why the wasps are there.
- Cover or put away food, fruit and sweet drinks, and wipe up spills straight away.
- Keep bins closed, rinse recycling and empty them regularly.
- Clear children's beakers, juice cartons and ice lolly sticks from the garden after play.
- Fit fine mesh to the windows you open most, and use a door screen on the back door.
- Pick up dog and cat food after meals, and clean the bowls.
- Keep toys, shoes and picnic blankets away from any area where wasps are flying in a line.
If the wasps are still arriving in numbers after a few days of this, or you see them disappearing into a gap in a wall, roof or hole in the ground, a nest is the likelier explanation. Keep the family away from that area. Do not let children investigate or throw things at it, and talk to them about why it should be left alone.
Teach older children where the wasps have been seen and why that part of the garden is off limits for now. A clear boundary is easier for a child to follow than a general warning, and it avoids the temptation to go and look.
Arranging a visit
Wasps start building nests from late April depending on the weather, the colonies grow through the summer, and numbers peak in August, when a nest can hold 2,000 to 10,000 or more wasps. A nest close to a family home is best treated promptly.
We charge a fixed £90 per nest, or £35 for an additional nest on the same property, with no call-out charge. We confirm the price on the phone before a technician visits, and no work is done unless you agree. We are open seven days a week, offer same-day service, and cover homes and businesses in Morley, a West Yorkshire town south-west of Leeds, and the surrounding area. Training is in place for every technician, and the work is fully insured.
Ring 0113 347 0014, or use the online form on the contact page. Tell us where the wasps are going in and whether anyone at the property is allergic to wasp stings. You can ask the technician whether the empty nest can be taken down once it has been treated.
Wasps on your property in Morley?
Fixed price £90 per nest, no call-out charge, same-day service available.