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@9999deoxys - Thanks for your comment. We avoid all pesticides and toxins in our work as we collect wasp venom for biomedical use in Venom Immunotherapy which cannot use contaminated wasp stock. So we utilize strictly non-toxic methods when removing wasps through vacuum extraction. This also protects our clients and the ecosystem from unnecessary exposure to toxins.

@kb1sxv - Thanks for your comment. We appreciate your interest in our channel!

@b1blazin13 - Thanks for your comment. Well said. Most wasps are docile towards people so long as you don't directly attack them. Like any animal, they'll defend themselves when threatened, otherwise they'll usually just ignore you. Finding ways to live alongside nature, rather than destroying it for convenience, is the key to finding balance in the ecosystem.

@FATMAC2 - Thanks for your comment. When you have wasp nests in inaccessible areas under decks, etc., you can try flushing below the deck boards with a mixture of dish soap and water and essential oils (peppermint, clove, lemongrass). Assuming you can get water between the cracks of the deck boards, dump several gallons of this mixture directly onto any nest areas you can find. You can also use a garden hose in combination with dish soap and oils to pump water into any nest areas to drown them out. The key is to hit the nest directly so maybe invest in a scope cam (borascope) so you can see what you're doing below the deck boards and target the right areas.

@knockitofff - Thanks for your comment. For anyone who works in the field where they may be exposed to wasp nests and potential sting risk on the job, safety is a key priority. We recommend carrying a spray bottle filled with a non-toxic mixture made of dish soap and water (you can also add essential oils like peppermint, clove and lemongrass). This simple spray will kill wasps on contact without the need for toxic pesticides. The soap/water and oils clog up the breathing pores on their abdomen which suffocates them quickly. There are times when it is not feasible/practical to save/relocate wasps, so we recommend being prepared with the next best option that removes the threat and keeps the ecosystem free from poisons.

@thomashawkinson7017 - Thanks for your comment. We appreciate the feedback as we attempt to bring knowledge about how to deal with wasps without the need for toxic pesticides, and help people understand the beneficial nature of wasps!

@Swigalig - Thanks for your comment. Great that you have been able to observe a beneficial native wasp nest as it develops throughout the season. Once the nest has been abandoned for the season and all wasps die off, it is perfectly fine to remove the nest to keep as a specimen/display/study item. Most paper wasps do not reuse old nests, and the spring queens will simply build their own nests next season. Just be aware that old wasp nests usually will contain multiple species of other insects that borrow the old wasp nest for habitat or survival. These may include small parasitic wasps (who put their own cocoons inside the wasp nest cells), mud wasps, booklice, spiders, mites, etc. Best practice is to heat treat old wasp nests (baking at low oven temps of 140-150 degrees) to kill off anything living in nest prior to archiving or display. Be careful not to burn the nest as higher temps will change the color and may singe the nest. But they are made of mostly wood fiber so they can withstand quite a lot of heat before they actually burn.

@@greenwaspremoval Awesome, thank you!

@Swigalig - Welcome anytime.

@ivoryjohnson4662 - Thanks for your comment. It's been a pleasure providing this service to the community. People are becoming more aware of the beneficial nature of wasps and why they should avoid killing them, and avoid using toxic insecticides to remove them. All most people need is education about the better options they have to deal with wasps and they will then make better choices.

@cherylkoenig5509 - Yes, that was too many to have in a bedroom for sure! What a crazy thing to see when they come crawling through that internet box. Good lesson for all of us to make sure our home internet line and other utility lines are all sealed up properly!

@@greenwaspremoval It really is! I'm always amazed at the small spaces that they can get into.

This species especially (Eastern Yellowjackets/Vespula maculifrons) is one of the smallest yellowjacket species we deal with so they can get into tiny spaces.

@jackdowns1156 - Thanks for your comment. Glad you have enjoyed the episode!

@NorvilleRogers-MYSTERY-INC - Thanks for your comment. Good luck with your nest relocation! Good for you for trying to assist your beneficial native wasps. They are amazing little creatures indeed.

@greenwaspremoval they truly are. This beauty has made her nest on the inside of a cocoon chair I sit in daily. I sit underneath her and stare up as she goes about building the nest and feeding the larvae. She flies in and out above my head without a threat. Simply incredible that I can sit and read a book with a wasp 2 inches away

@NorvilleRogers-MYSTERY-INC - Most paper wasps are similar in their lack of aggression towards people, especially in the earlier part of their nest development. So long as you do not startle them, and they continue to behave themselves, they make great housemates!

@StephenBlack-r6t - Thanks for your comment. Glad to help. Good luck with your wasp/bee adventures!

@Lunarapparition88 - Thanks for your comment. Wasp art is the best natural art! Good luck with your projects. There have been some amazing art pieces done with wasp paper and nest materials from around the world. Check out artists like Ann Savageau, she's done a lot of work with hornet nest paper and comb materials, etc. Others are Ian Ashcroft, Sue Brightly, Valerie Hammond, and there are others you can seek out on Google. Have fun with your wasp art!

@dogbarbill - Thanks for your comment. This music track at 22:20 is titled "Jaracanda". The 2 minute instrumental song is from the royalty-free "jingles" choices available on older versions of Apple/Mac iMovie editing software. It appears in all sorts of content created by millions of people over the past decade or more because it is free for use and widely available to anyone using Mac editing software. The writer/artist is unknown (to us) as it is not credited in the iMovie software.

@AlexDowns-tf9qf - Thanks for your comment. Your positive thoughts are welcome and appreciated!

@thomashawkinson7017 - Thanks for your comment. Glad you have enjoyed the imagery in our episodes. It's amazing how the world looks when viewed close up in slow motion, among other ways of seeing nature.

@davidp1838 - Thanks for your comment. Great to hear the Venom Immunotherapy has helped you! From what we understand VIT treatment is over 95% effective in creating immunity for people with severe allergies. Glad it worked for you.

@cherylkoenig5509 - That's a great question. We experimented with this suspended free range habitat technique this season to assess how the Baldfaced Hornet nests would do when relocated close together inside the incubation habitats. The results were very interesting. Some nests blended together into one larger nest (they built new outer paper envelope covering both sets of brood combs), while other nests seemed to become inactive and die off, and others just kept on foraging like normal, ignoring the other nests around them. So it seemed that they could tolerate close proximity to other nests to a degree, but when packed together too tightly, they did not do as well.

@@greenwaspremoval So they're doing well with two queens? Or did they kill one off? They're such interesting little creatures.

@cherylkoenig5509 - It's hard to know for sure if the combined relocated nests had two functional queens or maybe one queen that took over both nests. More experimentation will be required next season to gain more knowledge about it.

@cherylkoenig5509 - Thanks for your comment. Relocation is a great way to allow for incubation of the brood comb so we can collect the adult wasps for Venom Immunotherapy as they pupate out.

@jackdowns1156 - Thanks for your comment. Glad you enjoyed the episode!

@jackdowns1156 - Hi and thanks for visiting our channel. We appreciate your interest. Stay tuned as we'll have lots more wasp content to share throughout the year.

@tbear4pa - Thanks for your comment. Well stated! Vespula germanica (German Yellowjacket) can potentially wreak havoc in places where they are invasive. It remains to be seen how much damage they may or may not cause to the rest of the ecosystem in these areas where they are introduced. Many of us in the business of wasps/entomology wonder about the global impact on native species of wasps and many other native species of animal life that may depend on the same resources that V. germanica depletes in these places. The big question is will the ecosystem balance itself out somehow when invasive wasps expand into vast stretches of native range? We suppose only natural evolution will tell us in due course.

Well...here in the US, in locations such as the Northeast as well as the Midwest, they just do their normal routine like in Europe with the new queens just going through the normal hibernation in the winter, but in the far West, like in Washington and Oregon, going down the West Coast into California where some over-wintering nests may occur, there's a potential for an exploding population there.

@tbear4pa - Some of our native yellowjackets in the SE region of USA are already making some perennial (year round) super nests. Massive multi-year Vespula squamosa (Southern Yellowjacket) nests have been reported more frequently in the past 20 years of warming climate especially. Entomologist, Dr. Charles Ray, has done some interesting research documenting some of these huge nests over the years. At times, some southern states have received reports of dozens of these massive super nest colonies found all around the state in a single year. This will likely become the norm eventually as the planet heats up, and we do wonder if V. germanica will end up thriving like that in the Southern USA as they have in Aus/NZ.

@cherylkoenig5509 - That type of wasp nest does look like some type of multi-level apartment building for wasps! It seems like the wasps realize that there may be danger when they see the vac in front of their door, but they are so instinctually driven to get to the nest, they eventually cross the path of the vac suction and get collected. They also will explore anything that looks like a dark hole near their nest - this seems to be instinctual behavior too, likely evolved to get them back to their nest entrance when orienting visually. This works to our advantage when we're collecting them as we can put the vac hose near wherever the nest entrance is, or used to be, and they will eventually explore the vac hose and get collected. Most wasp species that live in paper-covered nests will do this same behavior.

@ivoryjohnson4662 - Thanks for your comment. We learn something new every day we work with wasps, and we share what we learn as we go! Thanks for watching.

@herc1120 - Thanks for your comment. Great point about the unknown impact Vespula germanica (German Yellowjacket) may have on our native wasps. They are such prolific hunters/foragers that they must reduce a lot of the insect/nectar resources that would otherwise go to our native wasp species and other native insects and animals that depend on the same insects/nectar. This season we've also found more V. germanica nesting in the ground, as well as in buildings. In the past we've only seen them in buildings/sheds around here. So we do wonder if they are increasing their populations at the expense of our natives.

@marinapotenza9958 - Wasps do have fascinating lives! It would be interesting to live the life of a wasp for a day.

@christiandeee6058 - Thanks for your question. The way we can identify the queen in a wasp nest is through observation of her physical looks/size and her activity. The queen is much larger than regular worker wasps, and she's the only wasp flying in the initial stages of a new wasp nest. She does all the foraging for food and nest building material, and she is alone during construction of the nest until the first batch of workers is born on the nest, and then they'll take over a lot of the foraging behavior while the queen stays on the nest and focuses on laying eggs. So queens are relatively easy to spot once you know what to look for.

@alanhoffman683 - Thanks for your comment. This is a great question to share with viewers because many will wonder about this same idea. The reason you should never fill an active wasp tunnel or entry hole from the outside is because this will force the wasps further into the structure they are nested in (they may resort to chewing their way into the living space or entering through wall/ceiling holes where there are light fixtures, vent fans, internet/utility lines, electrical outlets, etc. So it is best to allow them out through their main exterior entry/exit hole until the nest is no longer active (through collecting the wasps with vac and/or traps, or waiting until the end of the season when the nest dies off naturally). Once the nest is no longer active, you can follow routine exclusion protocols and seal up the structure carefully with expanding foam, caulk, wire mesh, etc. to close up any holes, cracks, gaps. This will deter the wasps and other insects from returning to the structure in following seasons.

Because plug up hole then they work into house

@teresaallen3045 - Thanks for your comment. That is exactly correct. We are often called to removals where the clients attempted to treat the entry point from the outside by spraying it or applying poison powder and/or filling/sealing it will something - only to have the wasps end up inside the structure.

@Greenlife-hg8zm - Thanks for your comment. We saw more Southern Yellowjacket (Vespula squamosa) nests this year as well. They seem to be expanding into a wider range as the climate heats up the world. In the Southern regions of the USA, where winters are getting more and more mild, Southern Yellowjackets are often building perennial super nests that don't die off in winter because the weather isn't cold enough to kill them. So they have huge nests with multiple egg laying queens. This is bound to increase their overall population in North America eventually. Indiana had the hottest years on record the past couple years in a row, with milder winters. Species will change and evolve and move with the climate.

@jje984 - Thanks for your comment. That is very true! To keep wasps and other insects out of the home, it is best practice to follow exclusion protocols at the end of the season (preferably after first couple of hard frosts). This involves inspecting the entire structure for any holes/cracks/gaps/etc. and filling them with caulk, expanding foam, wire mesh, etc. This prevents new wasp queens from trying to set up nests the following Spring.

@thomashawkinson7017 - Thanks for your comment. We appreciate you watching our channel! Wasps make amazing subjects for photo/video.

@pattihansen6122 - Thanks for your comment. Apple trees become very popular with wasps this time of year. Especially the fallen fruit provides them with sugars they need to survive longer during the dearth period when insect prey dies off and nectar flow stops. As long as they behave themselves they make great neighbors! Good luck avoiding stings.

@brigittecampbell9349 - Thanks for your comment. Glad this technique worked for you! Good luck with your bee/wasp work.

@ivoryjohnson4662 - Thanks for your comment. Great point. The students get to have the experience we give them in the field, and then many YT viewers get to share in that experience for years to come, so the learning and knowledge keeps on going indefinitely. Hope YT will be around a while!

@kasanisandeep - Thanks for your comment. Great to see Potter Wasps out and about. They make really interesting mud houses for their babies. Amazing engineering, constructed of thousands of individual pieces of mud, collected over so many flights back and forth during construction, and blended into one big structure that is literally solid as a rock. Nice that you captured it on video and will share it with the world!

@ivoryjohnson4662 - No breaks yet. We'll probably be busy right through late October or so.

@rcpd3359 - Thanks for your comment. Potter wasps and most wasps may be running out of food this time of year (early Autumn) so they are all out there trying to survive on anything they can find. Great beneficial native species to have around.

@imagin916 - Thanks for your comment. Great question! When a wasp nest is left inside a wall, it typically does not attract too many other insects or wasps from what we have seen. Most nests just dry out and die off empty. German Yellowjackets often remove the larvae themselves if they are no longer able to support them, leaving the nest empty and mostly dried out by the end of the season. There are always some insects that parasitize wasp nests in general, but these also die off in winter. Many times when an old house is remodeled, construction people find old wasp nests inside walls/ceilings/floors that have been there empty for many years. These are often still in good shape because they are made out of wood fiber so when left untouched in a dry place, they can last a very long time. Wasp nests are different than honey bee nests which can make a terrible mess inside walls due to the honey they create and the larger populations of bees that often inhabit bee hives. The honey can drip down the walls and seep through ceilings, etc., and the honey will attract ants and others pests that eat sugar. Wasps generally do not have these problems.

@@greenwaspremoval that’s great to know, thank you!

Welcome anytime.

@herc1120 - Thanks for your comment. Always good to hear from you herc1120! Interesting that you are seeing fewer V. germanica (German Yellowjacket) and more D. arenaria (Yellow Hornet / Aerial Yellowjacket) in your area. We've never seen D. arenaria around here locally (yet) - although they evidently do exist in this region. Wish we had them here since they are highly sought after for Venom Immunotherapy (VIT) lately. If you ever want to collaborate on venom collection techniques, we can get you set up with some collection gear like we use that will attach to your current vac system and you can start collecting all your D. arenaria for VIT so they don't go to waste when you remove them. Feel free to reach out offline anytime if you are interested in discussing details about this. You can reach us through greenwaspremoval.com. You are correct about our attrition collections (as featured in this episode) taking multiple visits to collect all the wasps until the nest is eventually starved out. For VIT collection this works great. It's like incubating multiple nests at once but using other people's structures to do this until all the nests eventually starve out. We usually stop at a couple different attrition sites each time we go out. We keep them on a regular collection route. This way the clients never have a large build up of forager wasps, and we get to keep collecting them for VIT as they pupate out new batches of adults - so everyone wins from these arrangements. It's great you help clients utilize their own wet/dry vac for attrition collections that require multiple days of vac work. We often teach clients who are willing to handle it themselves how to deal with their own inaccessible nests with the shop vac system. Daily vac work starves out nests fairly fast and keeps the foraging adult wasp populations well under control.

@cherylkoenig5509 - Thanks for your comment. So glad you enjoyed the slow motion footage - we are doing more of that in upcoming videos and it is always fun to shoot close ups of wasps. It is truly amazing how much food (pest insect meat and plant nectar) wasps bring back to the nest all day long. You can't really see that unless you slow everything down and blow it up so we can view it in detail!

@@greenwaspremoval I'm glad to hear that you're going to do more slow motion. These creatures are so fascinating to watch.

@cherylkoenig5509 - yes, we've been shooting slow motion in many of the removals we've done lately. Stay tuned for more slomo action.

@kekkarma - Thanks for your comment. Fantastic that your thesis was on wasp pollination! More people around the world need to learn about this part of beneficial wasp behavior! More slow motion footage on the way soon.

@@greenwaspremoval Exactly, and showing wasps interacting with flowers looks not only pretty put is really adorable. Great to showcase people. Can't wait for more awsome footage! Great video!

@kekkarma - We agree - there is something special about slow motion footage, same with wasps on flowers. Sometimes you just have to slow this hectic world down in order to appreciate it properly!

@skarlets_rose_of_secrets7878 - Thanks for your comment. That's awesome. Nice to see some nature in the city! Potter wasps are beneficial native wasps so it's good to hear that some can survive in the urban environment.

@ronaldstilwell3464 - Thanks for your comment. You bring up a good point about having an extra shop vac on hand to handle any removals of contaminated nests/wasps. We do the same thing basically, and we also use that extra vac sometimes for removals that have a lot of dirt/debris that cannot be separated from wasps/nests we are trying to collect. In this video, we simply missed the toxic powder before we started the removal so we just completed it with the usual gear that had to be decontaminated by that point anyway. More careful inspection of work areas prior to removals is the lesson here for us. Can't be too careful in this work. Our program with the Manchester University Wasp Survey Team offers the local community free nest removals in the zip code surrounding the college. It's been a very popular program in the community and within the school admin, but if the nests have been treated, we cannot offer that service as the team is not willing to deal with exposure to toxic pesticides. We had to decline several jobs this season due to pesticide contamination being discovered on routine inspections prior to removals. In these cases, we instruct people how to do the removal themselves if they are willing. Sometimes people disclose the use of pesticides and sometimes they don't. So it's always on us to assess/inspect case by case.

@Psycho9263 - Thanks for your comment. Brings up a great point that consistently happens in our society. Corporations bring a product to market without fully testing it for long term health hazards to all forms of life, yet they claim it is safe. This is simply done for profit over the well being of the human race and the animal kingdom. Then people and animals get sick from these products, and we learn too late that the products are in fact toxic. This is a huge failure of basic government protection of society to allow this to happen so often. Nothing should be allowed to enter the market without rigorous long term testing first. If long term testing is not feasible for corporations prior to selling a product, then that product simply never gets to come to market at all. Period. It's not rocket science to figure out how to fix this issue, it's very simple, yet somehow it keeps happening year after year with toxic product after toxic product.

@cherylkoenig5509 - Thanks for your comment. It is really weird that people are generally completely unaware of the long term effects of toxins in the ecosystems we all must share and live in. There is only so much land, air and water available to us on this planet. You can't poison it all forever without facing major blowback that eventually affects us all. It takes mass education about all this, and mass agreement that such education is worth the effort to begin with. Most people will do the right thing and protect the environment if properly educated about it.

@cherylkoenig5509 - Thanks for watching! We are honored to have viewers ride along with us.

@ivoryjohnson4662 - We don't believe there was any intentional deception here. It was just a matter of people doing the only thing they knew how to do to handle a problem. Most people in modern society literally have no clue that there are many healthier alternatives for controlling insects than using the same old toxic poisons they have always used. Once they learn better alternatives, many people are willing to change and stop using poisons in the environment. The problem is there are not enough public awareness campaigns about this to counter all the mass marketing advertising from huge corporations that make and sell toxic chemicals.

@@greenwaspremoval thank you for educating the public

@ivoryjohnson4662 - Thank you for being part of that education. People being willing to discuss these issues in public, and making a stand for what is right, is a huge part of how positive change will happen in the future.

@imagin916 - Thanks for your comment. We're not sure what happened at this property or who exactly dumped all that toxic powder around. We don't think there was any intentional deception, it was more a matter of people just doing things the only way they they know how to, because they have never been shown any better way to control insects. This is the issue in our entire society, people simply don't know better a lot of the time. Many people are willing to change once they learn about workable alternatives. The vacs did have to be cleaned up with the rest of the gear used on this site to make sure the poison powder residual was washed away. The wasps do not come into direct contact with the vacs (they are enclosed in the collection bottles at the end of the vac hose), but the vacs have vents that blow air out constantly, so none of us want to be breathing that stuff while we work!

@@greenwaspremoval I thought I replied to your comment, but I don’t see it so if a duplicate comes up I apologize. Basically I just wanted to say thank you for your reply and this is a great learning lesson for the students. We know being more experienced than these young adults that when situations like this happen we make lemonade with the lemons to avoid having this happen again. Your team has a process of how they do things before starting, this step could be added to the workflow to check for these powders before starting the collection to prevent this from happening again. I also know that some of these pest control companies advertise that they use nontoxic stuff and the customer really doesn’t realize that it is toxic. If this was a professional company that did this they should be ashamed of themselves. I hope that homeowner didn’t have any pets because I can’t imagine a dog or a cat walking out onto the deck with that powder all over their paws.

@imagin916 - We agree. Careful inspection of work areas is very important in the process. And your point is spot on about other animals/pets being exposed to this poison simply by walking around in the areas where the toxic powder landed. Same goes for children - especially toddlers/babies who have the most contact with the ground and constantly have fingers in mouth, etc. There is no truly "safe" way to use these toxins in the environment that we all have to share.

@hanaoshimapiano - Thanks for your comment. We agree! There are no safe levels of poison - not for food, not for pest control, not for anything. We all need to just relearn how to live in a world without using toxins in everything we do.