How to Tell If You Have an Active Wasp Nest on Your Tingley Property
Nests in hedges, bushes and trees are easy to miss until someone trims them, so a careful look at foliage and branches can save you from a nasty surprise.
Hedges and trees can hide a whole colony
Wasps will build in the gaps inside dense hedges, in shrubs, in hollow trunks and even among thick ivy on a wall. From outside, you may see only the odd wasp and nothing that looks like a nest, because the nest sits deep in the foliage.
The way to tell whether there is a live nest is the same as anywhere else: look for a pattern of wasps flying purposefully to and from one point, not wandering across leaves. Where the point is within a hedge, it may be a small gap between branches that you could easily miss.
Hedges and trees are especially easy to underestimate because leaves hide so much. A nest the size of a football can sit a short distance inside a thick hedge and be completely invisible from the lawn, with only a slight rise in wasp traffic to hint at it.
Ivy deserves a mention too. A thick mat of ivy on a wall or fence gives wasps the same shelter as a hedge, and it is often forgotten when people think about where a nest could be.
What to look for in foliage
- Wasps repeatedly vanishing into the same patch of a hedge or the same hollow in a tree.
- A round or oval grey-brown shape glimpsed through leaves, which may be the outer shell of a nest.
- A steady humming from the hedge that you can hear from a few metres away on a warm day.
- Dead or leafless patches in the foliage near the entrance.
- Wasps that lift off and fly in a straight line away from the hedge, rather than hovering around flowers.
Because leaves move in the breeze, shadows can look like activity. Watch for a few minutes to be sure of what you are seeing.
Early in the season, a young nest may be no bigger than a golf ball and sit low in the foliage, where it is easily missed. By midsummer it can be many times that size, so a hedge that looked clear in May may well hide something substantial by July.
Walk along the line of the hedge slowly and from the far side if you can. Wasps on the move are easier to follow when you are not standing right beside the leaves.
Keep the shears and strimmer away
Most people discover a hedge nest when they cut it. The sound and vibration of trimmers, strimmers and chainsaws is exactly what provokes a colony, and the first sign can be a cloud of wasps around your head. If you have not yet cut the hedge this year and notice wasps around it, leave it alone.
This also applies to pruning with hand tools, shaking branches and pulling out dead growth. Even gentle work close to a nest can set off a defensive response, and a colony may hold thousands of wasps at the height of summer.
If you already started trimming and found a nest, put down your tools, walk away calmly without waving your arms, and go inside. Keep the area clear until it has been dealt with.
Distinguishing a nest from other things in a hedge
Not every ball in a hedge is a wasp nest. Birds build nests with twigs and moss, a drey made by a squirrel is a ball of leaves, and caterpillar webbing can look like grey silk. A wasp nest is made of thin, papery material in layers and is usually grey or buff, with a small entrance hole near the bottom. The wasps are the giveaway: if there are none going in and out, you may be looking at something else.
Bumblebees nest in grass, banks and old burrows, and they are not the same as wasps. If you think you have bees, contact a local beekeeper or the relevant bee organisation rather than us, since we treat wasps only.
Seeing the nest is not essential. If you can watch wasps flying into a spot and not coming out, and hear a hum, that is enough to treat it as a live nest without going closer to look.
Check also for hollow trunks and old stumps. A hole at the base of a tree, with wasps passing in and out of it, is as good an indication as one up in the branches.
Late summer and the spreading nest
A nest in a hedge continues to grow, and the larger it gets the more noticeable the wasp traffic becomes. In August the colony is at its peak with anywhere from 2,000 to 10,000 or more wasps, and nests that were invisible in May may now be a clear problem for a garden in Tingley, in the Leeds area, or any other place with mature planting.
If you have a hedge along a path, a driveway or a boundary with neighbours, let people know that wasps are active there and ask them to avoid it. A temporary barrier at a safe distance can help.
Trees in particular can be tricky. A nest in a hollow limb or a cavity high in a trunk may only be given away by a stream of wasps entering a knothole. Keep that part of the garden clear of seating, washing lines and play equipment for now.
Having it dealt with
A trained, fully insured Wasp Exterminator Leeds technician will treat a nest in a hedge or tree as readily as one on a building. The cost is a fixed £90 per nest, or £35 for each additional nest on the same property. We agree the price by phone before visiting, there is no call-out charge, and no work is done without your agreement.
We cover Tingley and surrounding villages, seven days a week, with same-day service for homes and businesses. If anyone has a sting allergy, tell us when you book. Call 0113 347 0014, or use the booking form on the contact page and say roughly where in the hedge or tree the wasps are going.
Wasps on your property in Tingley?
Fixed price £90 per nest, no call-out charge, same-day service available.