Follow the flight line before you go looking
It is the coming and going, not the nest itself, that usually gives the location away first. Watch from a safe distance on a mild afternoon for wasps returning repeatedly to the same spot on the house, a tree, or a garden structure - that spot decides which part of this guide applies to you.
Eaves on Ealing's Edwardian villas
In the larger Edwardian houses around Ealing and Hanwell, a gap at the fascia board or under a slipped tile is often all a queen needs to reach the roof space in spring. These older roofs, with their deeper eaves, give a nest room to grow largely unnoticed until it is well established.
Garden trees along the avenues
The mature trees that line Ealing's broad avenues, and the parkland around Walpole Park, also shelter nests, sometimes built well up in the canopy rather than in a building at all. A nest here is often spotted only once fallen leaves or hedge-cutting disturbs it.
Sheds behind Southall's terraces
In Southall's more densely packed streets, sheds at the back of a terrace, opened only occasionally, offer a queen a quiet spot away from the house itself. If wasps seem to be coming from a shed you rarely open, treat it the same as one inside the house - leave the entrance alone and do not look inside.
What to do today
- Keep children and pets away from the flight line
- Keep windows shut on the side of the house or shed where the nest is
- Leave the entrance open and the nest untouched
- Clear sweet drinks and fallen fruit from the garden, which draw wasps in late summer
Why late summer feels worse
By late summer the colony is at its biggest, yet the queen has largely stopped laying, cutting off the sugary secretion workers usually rely on from the larvae, as anyone near Acton will recognise, where denser Victorian and Edwardian terraces towards the borough's eastern edge. They go looking for sugar themselves instead, which is why bins and drinks suddenly draw more attention.
Booking wasp nest removal in Ealing
A standard wasp nest removal in Ealing is a £90 fixed price, guaranteed: if the nest is still active within 30 days we come back at no extra cost, and that applies equally whether the nest turns up near Southall - where densely terraced streets and multi-let houses - or anywhere else nearby, so book wasp nest removal and tell us roughly where the entrance is, with the full terms on the Ealing wasp nest removal page.
