Yes, yellowjackets often nest beneath deck boards and inside deck framing because it is dark and dry. Yellowjackets also nest in the ground under decks and inside the hollow spaces of railings and stairs.
It’s not your imagination if it feels like yellowjackets show up around the deck a lot. In Hartford yards, decks give yellowjackets a lot of different places to set up nests nearby.
The underside of the decking is a very common place for yellowjackets to set up. A single queen only needs a narrow gap between boards to access the joist bays and start building. By the time you figure out what's going on, likely around midsummer, the colony could already be huge with wasps coming out in steady streams on warm afternoons.
Ground nests under decks are also common. Yellowjackets will often commandeer abandoned rodent burrows near decks. These nests are nearly invisible until someone walks past the entrance hole.
And if those two options don’t work, wasps can always set up shop on railings and the undersides of stairs. Anywhere that there is a hollow or a void is fair game for building.
Two things make deck nests worse than nests elsewhere. The colony is directly under where your family sits, so vibration from footsteps agitates it. And by late summer a mature colony can number in the thousands and defend itself aggressively.
Timing your response matters more than just about anything. In May, nests may be as small as golf balls and removing them is fairly easy to do. But by the time it is late summer and early fall, wasp nests can often be the size of basketballs and stuffed with hundreds or thousands of wasps. At that point, it’s dangerous to try to take one down on your own. You can’t even get away with sealing the entry hole because wasps will just chew another exit if you do that (and they’ll be mad).
If yellowjackets have taken up residence in your deck, Mosquito Squad of Hartford can help. Mosquito Squad locates and removes stinging insect nests and treats the spots where they build. This will help you protect your deck for the people who use it.
