What is Bringing Wasps into Your Backyard?

The spring sunshine gets all of us excited for the summer ahead. Since you’ll undoubtedly be looking to spend more time in your backyard, you’ll be preparing it for hosting barbeques, doing some gardening and spending the long summer nights relaxing with your family. But there’s always the danger that wasps can ruin the fun. They’re annoying at the best of times and a true pest when they multiply and attack. So why are they so content in your backyard? Let’s have a look at why you might be creating a very nice home for them without even realizing it, and why you may need to consider professional wasp control with Truly Nolen.

Why Are Wasps Appearing In Your Backyard?

After continuing to find more and more wasps buzzing around in your backyard, it’s only natural that you’ll begin to wonder why the wasps are even there. The simplest answer is that whether you believe it or not, like bumblebees, wasps are pollinators. So while you’ve worked hard on your gardening and have a healthy collection of flowers blooming, you’re creating the perfect environment for wasps to enjoy. There are other things to look out for. Since wasps are pollinators, they’re attracted to sweet smells and will attempt to track down the source. This could be an obvious offender in your yard like an opened can of soda, or it could be less obvious like the smell of perfume. Either way, a wasp will spend time in your garden trying to find that sweet aroma. By cross-pollinating, the wasps are actually helping your garden. They’ll help spread pollen and create a healthy ecosystem – but that in itself is another problem. More thriving plants will mean more insects and spiders, which wasps are particularly fond of. Do you have decking? Or perhaps a set of steps leading from your home to the yard? Wasps will look to use those areas for nests, creating another issue in your battle to rid them.

What Do Wasps Eat?

As mentioned, wasps will find all sorts of treats in your backyard to feed their hunger. Like many other pests, they’ll be attracted to your waste, especially if you’ve left trash cans without their lids and spillage on the floor. Barbeques will provide them with an opportunity to eat meat. But they’ll find nutrition in your garden too. Do you have any fruit trees in the garden? Fallen apples are a great source of sugar for wasps and they’ll burrow their way into as many fallen fruits as possible. Garden-damaging insects are hunted by wasps too. Caterpillars, flies, aphids and even spiders are hunted by wasps for the majority of summer. If you find that you’ve got a lot of flies in your backyard, then you’ll also have a population of spiders which prey on them. As a result, the wasps will arrive to hunt the spiders.

How to Keep Them Away

There are a few simple ways you can keep your backyard wasp-free. Firstly, if you have any white light in the garden, you’ll want to replace it with yellow insect-repellant bulbs. If you attract fewer flies, there will be fewer spiders and ergo, fewer wasps. Another simple method to prevent an infestation is to dispose of your waste properly. That means covering the trash every time you add to it, and ensuring everything is properly sealed. Despite your best efforts, it could well be the case that you already have a wasp infestation beyond your control. At Truly Nolen, our wasp control experts will solve your painful pest problems, taking full control of the situation without you having to worry about a thing.