Archive for the ‘How To Kill Wasp Nests’ Category

Wasps’ Nests Destroyed £32.00 Manchester, Stockport, Cheadle, Gatley, Didsbury

0161 930 8814

Wasps’ Nests Destroyed £32.00 Manchester, Stockport, Cheadle, Gatley, Didsbury – Manchester Pest Control announce there will be no change in their fixed price of £32.00 to destroy wasps’ nests throughout the Manchester region, Manchester, Lancashire and Cheshire, in 2010. We work 7 days per week and do not charge extra at any time, evenings or weekends.

Social wasps

The nests of some social wasps, such as hornets, are first constructed by the queen and reach about the size of a walnut before sterile female workers take over construction. The queen initially starts the nest by making a single layer or canopy and working outwards until she reaches the edges of the cavity. Beneath the canopy she constructs a stalk to which she can attach several cells; these cells are where the first eggs will be laid. The queen then continues to work outwards to the edges of the cavity after which she adds another tier. This process is repeated, each time adding a new tier until eventually enough female workers have been born and matured to take over construction of the nest leaving the queen to focus on reproduction. For this reason, the size of a nest is generally a good indicator of approximately how many female workers there are in the colony. Social wasp colonies often have populations exceeding several thousand female workers and at least one queen. Polistes and some related types of paper wasp do not construct their nests in tiers but rather in flat single combs.

Social wasp reproductive cycle (temperate species only)

Wasps do not reproduce via mating flights like bees. Instead social wasps reproduce between a fertile queen and male wasp; in some cases queens may be fertilized by the sperm of several males. After successfully mating, the male’s sperm cells are stored in a tightly packed ball inside the queen. The sperm cells are kept stored in a dormant state until they are needed the following spring. At a certain time of the year (often around autumn), the bulk of the wasp colony dies away, leaving only the young mated queens alive. During this time they leave the nest and find a suitable area to hibernate for the winter.

First stage

After emerging from hibernation during early spring, the young queens search for a suitable nesting site. Upon finding an area for their future colony, the queen constructs a basic paper fiber nest roughly the size of a walnut into which she will begin to lay eggs.

Second stage

The sperm that was stored earlier and kept dormant over winter is now used to fertilize the eggs being laid. The storage of sperm inside the female queen allows her to lay a considerable number of fertilized eggs without the need for repeated mating with a male wasp. For this reason a single female queen is capable of building an entire colony from only herself. The queen initially raises the first several sets of wasp eggs until enough sterile female workers exist to maintain the offspring without her assistance. All of the eggs produced at this time are sterile female workers who will begin to construct a more elaborate nest around their queen as they grow in number.

Third stage

By this time the nest size has expanded considerably and now numbers between several hundred and several thousand wasps. Towards the end of the summer, the queen begins to run out of stored sperm to fertilize more eggs. These eggs develop into fertile males and fertile female queens. The male drones then fly out of the nest and find a mate thus perpetuating the wasp reproductive cycle. In most species of social wasp the young queens mate in the vicinity of their home nest and do not travel like their male counterparts do. The young queens will then leave the colony to hibernate for the winter once the other worker wasps and founder queen have started to die off. After successfully mating with a young queen, the male drones die off as well. Generally, young queens and drones from the same nest do not mate with each other; this ensures more genetic variation within wasp populations, especially considering that all members of the colony are theoretically the direct genetic descendants of the founder queen and a single male drone. In practice, however, colonies can sometimes consist of the offspring of several male drones. Wasp queens generally (but not always) create new nests each year, probably because the weak construction of most nests render them uninhabitable after the winter.

Unlike honey bee queens, wasp queens typically live for only one year. Also queen wasps do not organize their colony or have any raised status and hierarchical power within the social structure. They are more simply the reproductive element of the colony and the initial builder of the nest in those species which construct nests.

Social wasp caste structure

Not all social wasps have castes that are physically different in size and structure. In many polistine paper wasps and stenogastrines, for example, the castes of females are determined behaviorally, through dominance interactions, rather than having caste predetermined. All female wasps are potentially capable of becoming a colony’s queen and this process is often determined by which female successfully lays eggs first and begins construction of the nest. Evidence suggests that females compete amongst each other by eating the eggs of other rival females. The queen may, in some cases, simply be the female that can eat the largest volume of eggs while ensuring that her own eggs survive (often achieved by laying the most). This process theoretically determines the strongest and most reproductively capable female and selects her as the queen. Once the first eggs have hatched, the subordinate females stop laying eggs and instead forage for the new queen and feed the young; that is, the competition largely ends, with the losers becoming workers, though if the dominant female dies, a new hierarchy may be established with a former “worker” acting as the replacement queen. Polistine nests are considerably smaller than many other social wasp nests, typically housing only around 250 wasps, compared to the several thousand common with yellowjackets, and stenogastrines have the smallest colonies of all, rarely with more than a dozen wasps in a mature colony.

Wasps’ Nests Destroyed £32.00 Manchester, Stockport, Cheadle, Gatley, Didsbury

 

Destroying Wasps’ Nests In Manchester, Cheshire and Lancashire

 The early warm spring has caused the wasps’ nests in Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire and Liverpool to be very early this year.

 

Harrier Pest Prevention destroy wasps’ nests at a fixed price of just £29.95, seven days per week. 0800 019 8382

 

Manchester based Harrier Pest Prevention reports treating wasps’ nests in mid-May, a full moth earlier than usual, and the early start means that in 2009 the wasps’ nests will be larger and more numerous than in is usual.

Although 11 species of true wasp are found in Europe, only two, the Common Wasp (VESPULA VULGARIS) and the GERMAN WASP (VESPULA GERMANICA) are important as pest species. Both species overwinter as queens. The Common Wasp usually hibernates in buildings and the German Wasp typically overwintering under the bark of trees.

 

In spring the overwintering queens leave their hibernating quarters to seek nesting sites which could be in a hole in the ground, a hollow tree or artificial structures such as eaves, lofts and attics, garden sheds etc. The queen starts to build her nest with a papery material that she makes by chewing small pieces of wood mixed with saliva; this is known as Wasp paper. She will raise the first few workers by her own efforts and those workers will then commence the enlargement of the nest and caring for the immature Wasps to follow. Nest construction starts in earnest in June and will reach it’s maximum in size in September, when 5 – 10,000 workers may be present. These workers will forage for food up to 400 metres from the nest. The size of wasp colonies will vary from year to year, the severity of the previous winter is probably the key factor. In the Autumn the young queens mate and leave the nest to hibernate, the rest of the nest dies out and the nest is never used again.

 

Individuals react differently to being stung by wasps; some are hardly affected, others suffer considerable pain and swelling and a few become seriously allergic to being stung, which in some cases results in sudden death due to anaphylactic shock.

Control

It is always advisable to let a professional Pest Control Officer deal with a Wasp nest for the reasons mentioned above. An insecticide will be used to cover the entrance to the nest. Returning wasps will carry the insecticide into the heart of the nest and within a few hours all wasps should be dead.

 

It is inadvisable to allow a wasps nest to remain untreated as the resultant queens produced by the nest will invariably nest nearby in the following spring resulting in many more nests the following year. For this reason several nests are often clustered together in a locality.

 

 As a rough guide you should not expect to pay more than £45.00 – £75.00 to have a wasps nest treated unless it is located in an area which is particularly difficult to access.