Wasps making an early appearance in Saskatchewan

You might have noticed some pesky wasps buzzing around, or even worse, maybe you have already been stung.

Shawn Sherwood with Poulin’s Pest Control in Regina says it’s looking like there could be more stings than usual this summer.

“We’re seeing that (wasps) are coming out earlier. People are seeing them a lot sooner than they would normally expect,” Sherwood said. “It has a lot to do with the type of spring that we had, where we have finally had a reasonably dry spring and that allowed the juvenile queens to have lower-than-normal mortality over the winter months and into the spring.

“It’s looking like there is going to be a lot of them.”

Sherwood says the wasp problem won’t be isolated to one part of the province; he anticipates it being a Saskatchewan-wide issue.

“We will notice it in the rural areas where they’re less noticeable until they get really, really large and then we’re dealing with medicine ball-sized nests,” he said. “In the city, there are a lot more people that are observing what’s going on in these areas so they tend to get discovered sooner.”

If someone has a nest on their property, Sherwood says it’s usually best to have a professional handle it.

But, if the person chooses to handle it themselves, Sherwood says there are some ways to go about it.

“Once you see activity, you need to follow it back to where it is taking place. And that’s just a case of following it to a crack underneath your foundation, underneath a walkway or it can be a hanging nest or up in your eavestrough,” Sherwood said.

“Once you determine where they are, then there are two modes to treat them. If it’s a hanging nest — one of those grey paper nests that we’re all familiar with — then you buy a can of spray insecticide, you go out to the nest, you go out there right at dusk or as it’s getting dark, and you spray right up into the nest directly into the hole.

“They’re going to come pouring out because they’re not going to be happy with what you’re doing, and as they come pouring out, those spray insecticides are designed to kill them within seconds.

“You will usually be able to plug the hole in the nest with dead bodies, but it takes a good set of stones to stand in there and do that, especially if you want to be brave and do it during the daylight.”

For those wanting to tackle the problem in the dark, Sherwood says that’s a different challenge in itself.

“You’re going to pump insecticidal powder into the opening that they’re using. That way, as they go in and out, they are going to get it all over them and they tend to have fairly fuzzy bodies so they’re going to track it through the nest and it’s going to wipe the nest out in about a 24-hour period,” he said.

“Now, if you’re doing this work at night, and you’re doing it yourself, the No. 1 rule is do not use a flashlight to help you out. This is unless you have somebody that you really, really don’t like helping you, because then they can hold the flashlight.”

There are a few different types of wasps in the province — yellow jackets, European hornets and paper wasps — that make the usual grey nests that people see.

All of them pack a mean punch and can sting eight to 10 times usually in their lifecycle.

No matter what, Sherwood says it’s important to be cautious around them.

“They can be really nasty,” he said. “It’s important to be careful.”