Deep Eaves and Tiled Roofs Around Queensbury
The soffit board closing off that overhang has had the best part of a century of sun and rain. Where one has shrunk, split at a joint or lifted away from the wall, the slot behind it opens into the roof void, and a colony needs no more than that. From the drive there is nothing to see except a thin, unhurried line of wasps arriving at one point along the eaves and setting off again in the same direction. Where wasps build nests around houses runs through the other openings on a house of this age. A gap in the same eaves that keeps getting wider, with heavy scrabbling overhead at first light, is a squirrel rather than a wasp.
Nests in the loft and the converted roof
Once a colony is through the eaves it builds inside the roof space, and by August a nest hanging from the rafters can be the size of a football. Where the loft is still a loft, the first hint is usually a papery rustling overhead or a wasp or two at the landing window. Where the roof has been converted, that void is now the low eaves cupboard behind the knee wall of a bedroom, which puts the nest a few feet from where somebody sleeps. Keep those little doors shut rather than emptying the cupboard to find it, and read what to do about a wasp nest in the loft before you go up.
Sheds, garden offices and hedges
A long back garden usually holds a shed, often two, and increasingly a garden office or summer house at the far end. Each of them sits warm, dry and undisturbed right through the spring, which is exactly when a nest is founded and exactly when nobody looks. Nests hang beneath felt roofing, sit behind stacked pots, fill a folded parasol or bury themselves in a boundary hedge, and they tend to be discovered all at once by whoever is trimming or tidying. If a garden office is wired for power and worked in every day, say so when you ring, because a nest in its roof is a more pressing job than one in a shed that gets opened twice a year.
Ground Nests in Lawns and Under Patio Edges
Not every nest is up high. Wasps will take over an abandoned rodent burrow in a lawn, the loose ground at the edge of a border, or the void beneath the lip of a patio or a slab that rocks underfoot. The entrance is a neat hole with bare soil around it and traffic dropping straight down into it. Mowers and strimmers find these the hard way, so stop cutting that stretch of garden, keep children and the dog off it, and note the spot from several feet back. What to do about a nest in the ground explains how these differ from one in a roof. Winged insects pouring out of a crack in the paving for a single humid afternoon in July are flying ants.
What to leave alone until the visit
- Leave the opening exactly as you found it, because sealing a soffit slot or a hole in the ground while the colony is live sends the wasps hunting for another way out, sometimes into a bedroom
- Do not put a ladder up to the eaves, and do not lean over a patio edge for a closer look at a ground nest
- Keep the windows on that side of the house closed, the one directly below the entrance most of all
- Do not empty the shed or the garden office, or pull stacked furniture apart, while a nest is inside
- Keep the mower and the strimmer well away, and keep pets off that part of the lawn
Booking a Wasp Visit in Queensbury
Tell us where the wasps are going in, roughly how high that is, and how the back garden is reached, whether by a side gate, through the garage or through the house. Say if the entrance is a hole in the lawn or under a patio edge, and if the roof has been converted, whether the eaves cupboards have doors into them. Anyone in the household who has reacted badly to a sting before should stay well clear of the flight line, and signs of a severe allergic reaction after a sting mean calling 999. If you are unsure what you are watching, the signs of an active nest and telling wasps from bees settle it quickly.
In the days afterwards
Wasps out foraging carry on arriving at the entrance for a while, so leave the gap unblocked and the nearest windows shut for a few days, and stay out of the shed if that is where it was. Nobody needs to cut an old nest out of a soffit or dig one out of a lawn, since a nest is never occupied a second year. Should it still be active 30 days after the visit, we come back and there is nothing more to pay. How long wasp treatment takes to work sets out what is normal in between.
Fewer Queens Finding a Way In Next Spring
No roof of this age is ever wasp-proof, but winter is when the list of openings can be shortened. Our Brent wasp advice takes the wider view, Wasp Nest Removal Brent covers nests anywhere in the borough, and neighbouring Preston has the same run of interwar rooflines.
- Once the nest is dead, have a roofer refix loose soffit and fascia boards and check where the eaves meet the wall of the rear extension
- Walk the garden in late April and early May looking for a grey paper ball the size of a walnut under the shed roof, inside the garden office and along the hedge
- Ring about a small nest rather than knocking it down, because even a golf-ball nest holds a queen and often workers
- Keep the shed and the garden office shut through the spring, and shake out folded chairs and parasols before summer
- Keep bin lids down and clear windfall fruit off the lawn in late summer, when workers turn to anything sweet
