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Safe and Natural Ways to Get Rid of Wasps

Wasps are just one of the many insects that millions of people around the world are afraid of. Actual phobias of these critters are enough to completely ruin a day for the poor sufferer, and even as something as small as finding one in the back yard is enough to fill them with dread.

Thankfully, there are plenty of ways in which you can safely and naturally get rid of wasps, and you don't always need to resort to death. Believe it or not, wasps actually are very good for the ecosystem.

Why Wasps Are Good

Wasps help to keep the population of other insects down. Their primary food source tends be other bugs you'd rather not have around anyway, so without these yellow and black demons, we'd be overrun with gnats, midges, spiders, caterpillars, bees, flies, and even other wasps.

As well as ensuring the population of living bugs are kept down, wasps also help to 'clear up' the decomposing corpses of dead bugs all around us. Yellowjackets for example, are nasty and horrifying creatures than many of us would rather run a million miles away from but they feed the dead bugs to their young, essentially providing us with one of nature's maid services.

How to Deal with Wasps

If you have encountered a wasp, the best advice you will hear is not to run away or flap your hands around. Generally, wasps will only sting you if they feel threatened and although your behaviour might not seem overly threatening to you, you are a great deal bigger than they are. To them you look simply terrifying. They are just dealing with you how they would deal with any other predator they would come across in the wild - they immediately go on the offensive.

Avoiding wasps is a good idea if you can but it's not always possible, and if you find yourself with a problematic area where the wasps seem to swarm, it could very well be that you have a nest on your hands. At this point you should definitely call in pest control. This is not a problem you will want to deal with unarmed.

Traps can be used if you are trying to have a BBQ in the back garden and find yourself with an abundance of these irritating insects flying around. You can cut the top from a large fizzy soda bottle and turn it upside down into itself, for example. Fill the bottom section about halfway with water before you do that and you have yourself a wasp trap. The wasps can fly in the funnel but can't get back out again, normally getting exhausting and dying or drowning in the water below. Unless you weren't aware, wasps don't really like water much.

You can replace the water with a sweet beverage if you want to encourage the wasps away from where you are. Simply place the trap far enough away to not cause you a problem and let the wasps swarm. You will encourage them to come closer to you, but hopefully they will be more attracted to the trap rather than you and your guests.

The problem with this method is that you will need to dispose of the wasps and / or the bottle afterwards. After a while, more and more wasps will build up and with enough of a layer, they'll be able to clamber their way right back out of the trap again. This is not something you'll want - more wasps flying around you, and not effective trap to safely catch them in.

Of course with traps, you encourage the death of these insects and as we've already mentioned, wasps really are very good for the ecosystem. For a more effective solution, and a more humane one, you should probably consider using repellents rather than traps.

How to Repel Wasps

There are a number of very clever ways in which you can repel wasps rather than kill them. A fake wasps nest for example, is enough to keep many of the flying stingers at bay, and can be bought pretty cheaply from most places too, especially online.

Wasps are massively territorial so if they spot a nest and believe another colony lives there, they are likely to keep their distance. Who'd want to take on an entire colony of wasps alone? Not me that's for sure!

Peppermint oil is another great tool you have at your disposal and many insects and other pests hate this stuff. Spiders apparently don't like it very much and neither do rats or mice. I can't verify whether or not this is true but I regularly have peppermint oil in the house being used in one form or another, and I have never had mice or rats and I rarely get spiders.

According to other studies, wasps don't really like spicy stuff much either so you could try making a chilli-based spray and turn the temperature up on those waspy beasts! A couple of cups of water mixed with some chopped up chilli peppers on the heat for a while before cooling and pouring into a spray bottle is the perfect thing to take with you when you go camping!

Oh and here's a final tip - apparently bees and wasps don't like cinnamon. Why not sprinkle some around before you set the BBQ going?

If, after all your hard work and efforts, you are still finding yourself with a very recurrent and very annoying wasp problem, it might be time to admit defeat and just call in the professionals. Pest control are there for a reason and they may have the one simple solution you're lacking to finally get rid of those wasps for good!

And those are the safe and natural ways to get rid of wasps!