If you are seeing only the occasional wasp, they likely slipped in through an open door or a window with torn screening. If you see wasps regularly, especially in the same places, the colony is likely nesting in the structure itself and needs to be removed by a professional.
Seeing a wasp in your home is awful no matter how often it happens. But seeing one per week usually isn’t a sign of something major. Wasps sometimes find themselves lucky and able to slip indoors unnoticed through a door or a torn window screen. But if you keep seeing wasps regularly popping into your home, especially around the same place, you likely have a structural nest. And that’s going to need to be taken down by a professional.
Wasps like finding voids where they can place nests. Homes have plenty of these in between walls, in the corners of attics, or around soffits or chimneys. There are plenty of ways to access these voids too, such as gaps in siding, vent screens, or seams along the roofline. When a wasp queen scouts for a nest location, it can slip into one of these spaces to find a void and then establish a nest. Once that nest has time to grow to house hundreds or thousands of workers, wasps will occasionally, by sheer chance, find a way to leave the nest that isn’t the usual one. And that puts them inside your home. If you see sluggish or window-fixated wasps in your home on a regular basis, this is probably what’s happening.
Don’t seal the exterior hole while the nest is active. That’s a big mistake. Trapping a colony pushes it to dig its way out and if you’re unlucky, that might mean they go into your home in massive numbers. This is a big problem. A professional can properly take down the nest and treat the area to discourage rebuilding. It’s a lot less dangerous that way.
If you are regularly seeing wasps inside your home, Mosquito Squad of North Shore can help. Mosquito Squad locates and treats structural colonies and the gaps behind them. This can help you protect your home through the season and ahead of the next one.
