The Ground Wasp Saga

 

Back in July I was stung by a wasp while I was watering the garden. At first I thought wasps had made a nest in the sugar maple tree next door but I was VERY WRONG. They were ground wasps and they had made a nest in my raised bed.

Last year when I was putting together the beds I used the hugelkulture method of layering materials. I used leftover tree logs from the neighbor's tree - a HUGE branch had fallen and so I grabbed the branches that didn't get taken by our neighbor for their fireplace. One log was hollow (which is why the branch had fallen, it was extremely unstable). I thought I had truly filled it all the way with compost and leaves but I guess I made a lovely hibernation chamber for a wasp Queen instead. 

I learned an unfortunate lesson. Do not use hollow logs.

I used so many cans of wasp spray but there was just no way that I was able to get the whole nest. I used traps and trapped an unbelievable amount of wasps. But finally, the weather changed.

Wasps are temperature dependent upon flying and once it hits temps 50 degrees or lower, they get really sluggish and are unable to fly or move quickly, which means after their extremely aggressive months of August and September - you can finally relax and kill the shit out of them. The night temps were dipping into the 30s and I finally observed only 1-2 wasps flying out of the nest at a time. 

Yesterday it was 44 degrees. I decided to go for it. 

One thing to note: when wasps make nests, they actually create their own heat so stay warm to protect their babies. I knew that if I didn't expose the nest to the cold air I would probably have another nest next year.

I poked the nest and dislodged the log out of place - only 1 wasp flew out so I exposed the whole nest to the cold and pulled it apart to see what I was working with. There were maybe 25 wasps left that crawled out into the cold. They couldn't fly and could barely move.

This week was going to be warmer - but this upcoming weekend with temps in the low 40s would have been another good time to pull apart the nest. If I had wanted to do this in any warmer temperatures, I would have called in exterminator professionals because earlier this summer when I was stung, I also discovered that I'm allergic to wasps. My hand swelled up larger than a baseball and I was so itchy. A full 7 days of prednisone was most helpful but man, I never want to be stung again!

So this year, to remedy and refill my raised bed, I got a free bag of topsoil from a neighbor, I have compost from my compost pile and I have a full bag of straw to mix in. Because I used wasp spray, I washed off the galvanized metal bed with dish soap and I will not grow edibles in the bed next year, I am going to have to grow flowers next year and do soil testing for specific chemicals if possible to be able to plant edibles. I'll update as I go along.

SOOOOOO... get those wasp nests taken care of and make sure you kill the queen so she doesn't make a nest in your fresh garden beds next year!