7 Ways to Keep Wasps Away

If you’re wondering how to keep wasps away from your deck, you’ll need to know a handful of wasp deterrent strategies. In this article, we’ll give you seven tips for how to repel wasps so that you can keep wasps away from your home permanently.

Effective Methods For How to Stop Wasps From Coming Back

Each of these methods for how to deter wasps is effective, but you’ll have the best results when you combine several of them.

1. Destroy the Nests

Wasp nests are capable of overwintering and producing several generations of wasps in some cases. This means that one of the best ways for how to keep the wasps away is to purge their nests.

You can purge their nests with a hose or with mechanical force, but be ready for the counterattack of the wasps.

Once a nest has been mostly destroyed, the wasps which were living inside of it will leave to make another nest, even when they might be capable of salvaging the remains of their prior nest.

2. Fortify The Light Fixtures

Wasps love to make their home in the crook between light fixtures and the siding of your house. This means that if you remove the gap between your light fixtures and the corner of your home, the wasps won’t be able to set up their nest there.

Anything from a wooden block to a net will do the trick, so long as there isn’t anything for the wasps to attach their paper to.

3. Trim the Branches

Wasps love to build their nests in the crooks of tree branches even more than they like to develop in your light fixtures. Walk around the perimeter of your home and identify the branches which are about six feet off the ground or lower, then trim them.

While wasps still may be able to nest in higher up branches, they prefer branches that are lower to the ground in most cases.

Furthermore, if you force wasps to build their nests in higher areas, they’ll have a harder time making it to your home and back because the capable distance will be longer for them.

4. Spray Pesticides

Pesticides aren’t the first-line defense against wasps because their nests are resilient, and wasps inside the nest won’t be harmed by pesticides sprayed on the outside. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spray pesticides in areas where wasps are likely to roam.

If you can spray pesticides on your flowers and fruits, wasps that try to consume them will end up dying. Just make sure that none of your children or pets try to absorb the plants which have been dusted.

5. Entice Wasp Predators

Wasp predators include medium-sized birds, bats, spiders, and badgers. While introducing these predators may have a few unintended consequences for your yard, overall, they will be effective at thinning the numbers of wasps circulating.

Spiders are probably the safest predator to introduce to your yard, but only certain types of spiders will be large enough to consume wasps and inclined to build their webs on food sources, which wasps find appealing.

You can find out more by checking out your local wildlife guide to see which species of spider might be the right ones for your climate and your garden.

6. Place Wasp Traps

Wasp traps are similar to other traps targeting airborne pests. Typically, these traps are comprised of a smelly glue-like surface that flying insects will be attracted to and subsequently become stuck in.

Wasp traps don’t necessarily prevent wasps coming back to your area, but they have a small chance of killing wasp queens, which are trying to establish a new nest in your area.

This means that if you place the wasp traps during the early spring, the chances of a new wasp nest growing near your home in the summer and fall will be lower. Just remember to replace the wasp traps every few weeks, especially if there is a lot of warm or wet weather.

7. Control Food Sources

Controlling or denying the food sources of wasps is perhaps the most effective way that you can prevent wasps from returning to harass your family.

Wasps love to eat anything that is sweet. This means that if you prevent any fruits or nectars from being exposed to the open air in your garden or garbage area, wasps won’t have any reason to draw near.

It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to control your garden area completely, however, especially if you have flowers that you can’t move into a greenhouse or another area. Thus, you may want to try the next-best strategy: luring wasps to a single nectar depot, which is under your control.

If you do set up a controlled feeding location, you can always use it as bait to poison the wasps later on.