Wasp Nests High on Kilburn Roofs
A queen that has come through the winter starts her nest alone in spring, scraping weathered timber and chewing it into paper. She wants somewhere dry, sheltered and left alone, and the top of a large Kilburn house offers that in several forms at once. The taller the building, the later anyone notices.
Chimney stacks and old flues
Most of these houses kept their stacks long after the fireplaces were blocked up. An unused flue is a dry vertical shaft, a cracked pot, crumbling flaunching or a missing brick is all the way in she needs. Wasps drifting one at a time into a top-floor room through a boarded-over fireplace usually mean the nest is in the stack. Can wasps nest inside walls? covers nests with no visible paper at all.
Parapets, valleys and deep eaves
Where a terrace has a parapet across the front, the roof behind it drains into a hidden gutter, and the junctions of lead, brick and timber there open up small entry points. Lower down, the eaves boards and bargeboards of a bay or a back addition shrink, split and lift away from the brickwork, and a few millimetres is enough. Where wasps build nests around houses runs through the rest of the list.
Working Out Where the Nest Is
Choose a warm afternoon, stand well back and watch one spot for a few minutes. A nest shows itself as steady two-way traffic through a single opening; wasps drifting round a bin or a fallen apple are only feeding. Note which floor the entrance is level with, whether it faces street or garden, and how high it is. The signs of an active nest will help, and if the insects look round and furry rather than sharply marked, read wasp nest or bee nest. Winged insects pouring out of a crack in the garden path on one humid day are a flying ant day; scrabbling and thumping above a top-floor ceiling around dawn points to squirrels instead.
What not to do while you wait
- Do not fill or seal the opening: wasps shut out of their doorway hunt for another way through, which in a converted house can mean the flat below
- Do not put a ladder up to a parapet or stack to look, least of all from lightwell steps
- Do not spray into the gap from a window on the floor beneath it
- Keep the windows on that side shut and keep children and pets off the line the wasps are flying
Access and Who Arranges It in a Converted House
Height and access decide most of what happens next. Many nests here are dealt with from a ladder footed on level ground at the back, so it matters whether there is a side passage through and whether the garden is shared. Where the entrance is on a stack, behind a parapet or on the roof itself, it sits with whoever looks after the structure: the freeholder, the managing agent or, if you rent, your landlord. Tell them as well as booking, and say who they are when you call. The Pest Control Kilburn page sets out how jobs tend to divide in a building holding several households.
What to tell us when you book
- How high the entrance is, and whether it faces street or back
- Whether it is a chimney stack, the eaves, a parapet, a wall, the shed or the ground
- How we reach the back garden, and whether that garden is shared
- Who manages the building, if the nest is on a communal part of it
Anyone who has reacted badly to a sting before should keep well away until the visit, and signs of a severe allergic reaction after a sting mean calling 999.
After the Wasp Nest Is Treated
Foragers keep arriving at the entrance for a while, so leave the gap open, keep the nearest sash windows closed and give it a few days. An old nest does not need to be cut out, because next spring's queens begin somewhere new. If the nest is still active within 30 days, we come back at no extra cost. Will wasps return after treatment? sets out what is normal, and how long treatment takes to work covers the first day or two.
Fewer Nests on a Kilburn House Next Summer
Nothing makes a roof this tall wasp-proof, but repairs made in the right order help. Nests elsewhere in the borough are covered on Wasp Nest Removal Brent, and neighbouring Queen’s Park has much the same rooflines.
- Once the season is over and the nest is dead, have a roofer look at broken pots, open flaunching and lifted eaves boards
- In April and May, check the shed, the furniture store and low roof overhangs for a small grey ball the size of a golf ball, and call rather than knocking it off
- Keep bin lids down in a shared bin store, and rinse cans and bottles before they go out
- Cut back ivy that has reached the eaves, and clear fallen fruit in late summer
