Most of the service requests we get for bees are actually for Yellow Jackets.  Yellow Jackets are small compact wasps that do not have the pronounced wasp waist that so many people associate with wasps.

Of the bees that we do get service requests for, the mason bee and the bumble bee lead the pack.  Bumble bees are big and mostly black.  They can be very loud. Like most bees there is some honey in their nest, but not much.

Mason bees, or orchard bees, as they are also known, nest in the cracks between bricks, siding, and around windows.  They can be bluish, greenish, or mainly black.  Some people feel they look a lot like flies. They are not aggressive and rarely sting.

Yellow Jackets nest in voids, such as wall and ceiling voids, as well as in the ground.  They also make large paper envelope nests that you can sometimes see under eaves, in trees, or other vegetation.  They increase the size of their nests continually throughout the year.  The often chew through sheet rock and break through into living spaces when they nest in attic and wall voids. They get more aggressive in the late fall and early winter.  The last set of eggs are over wintering females.  Every nest dies out each winter and there is fierce competition every spring.

Bald Faced hornets are a larger cousin of the yellow jackets and are typically more aggressive, they will nest in all the same areas, but are found more commonly in vegetation. Hornet is a term used for any large wasp.

To keep our customers from getting stung, we recommend that the nests of Bald Faced hornets and Yellow Jackets, be left in place for a few days after each service, to allow all the wasps from the nest to get back into their nest, contact our control materials and die off.

We offer wasp prevention programs that cut down or eliminate most wasp activity on or in a home.

Paper wasps make smaller nests than Yellow Jackets and the wasps themselves are larger. They are often mistakenly identified as Yellow Jackets as they have the pronounced waspish waist and longer legs.  Their nests look like paper honeycombs and there is no paper envelope around the nest. There are new species moving into our area that are more aggresice and nest in more areas. They espeically like eaves, and gaps under the railing of decks.

Mud Daubers make small nests, often high on your eaves or in attic sapces that are the color of whatever local mud occurs in your area.  They are very elongated, with a very pronounced thin wasp waist. They are not very aggresive.

We typically knock down all Paper wasp and Mud Dauber nests that we can reach at our services for these pests.

Email us with questions, to set up an estimate, or a consultation:  service@pestfree.net