BIG Wasps nest

[Sparks]

I just found quite a large wasps nest in my loft (well it looks pretty damn big to me!)

It is about 30x30x40 cms - and it is full of wasps!

I have been having great fun vacuuming them up as they appear (they like the light in the loft!)

I don't have any chemicals to hand to spray them with, so I am planning on vacuuming them up (along with the nest) with a long metal attachment (I have a central cleaning system, with a very long hose!)

I need to get into the loft to change the UPS on my server up there, and I don't fancy them buzzing around my head

Any foreseeable problems with just sucking them up the vacuum?

I guess I can just leave them in there for a while, then empty it when they have stopped buzzing :-)

Sparks

[Jim Ley]

Do you have a blow ability on your vacuum too? maybe you could keep them for the next door-2-door salesmen/jehovahs witness? I'm sure a few squited out the letterbox would keep you free for a fair few months...

Jim.

[Sparks]

Hmm, never though of that! could prove handy! - what do I feed them with then! :-)

[Sparks]

Well they ahre happilly...or not as the case may me...buzzing about in my vacuum cleaner - Think I will leave them there for at least a week before I empty the bag :-/

[Mike Harrison]

Or just turn the hoover on and give a good long squirt of flykiller into the hose

[Suz]

Don't forget to cover the end of the pipe or you have some very p!ssed off wasps back for a visit. Wasps will live off each other when there is nothing else so they may live in there a long time! You could smoke them out and then hoover up the nest, but be careful not to burn your house down" If you can wait until the morning your local council will have a pest control section and will come and clear it for you. They may even do it free.

Suzanne

[Roger Mills]

Wait till it gets dark, and then some, and they will all be asleep inside the nest. Go up into the loft armed with a torch (don't switch the mains light on!), a large refuse sack and a small spade.

Hold the sack under the nest, and gently detach the nest from the structure with the spade - so that it, with all its occupants - falls into the sack. Seal the sack up PDQ.

This method is even better if you can pump a can of wasp nest destroyer powder into the nest entrance the night before - so that most of the occupants will already be dead before you capture the nest.

Roger

[dave roberts]

O

Birmingham council wont, free or not !!

Dave

[Sparks]

Nice idea, only one everso slight problem...they have built the nest right in a corner, so a spade wouldn't even touch it (it is protected by various other bits of wood in the corner)

I have now vacuumed the whole nest, and it's content up (alive!) so I now have a wasps nest in my vacuumed cleaner - It was quite funny sucking the escapees out of the air, although I doubt the feeling was mutual!

I will attempt to change the bag...at some point!!

Sparks..

[Mary Fisher]

The easiest - and most humane - solution will be to remove the bag by closing it by tying it with string or something similar before you take it from the machine, then put the bag with its contents into the freezer. If you're worried about dirt in your freezer put the vacuum cleaner bag into a clean plastic bag first.

The next day you'll be able to empty the bag safely, all the wasps will be dead. Promise.

I didn't see the OP or I could have given you some tips. Please don't use poisons.

Mary

[Sparks]

Having sucked all, or so I thought! of the wasps up my vacuum, on opening the server that was located in the loft, as well as a few dead ones, and a few bits of dead ones (I guess they took a close look at one of the fans in there!) a live (and rather pissed off!) one flew out and promptly stung me, so that one also went up the vacuumed, the little git....GRRRRR

Thought that would amuse you!

Sparks...

[Sparks]

I didn't use poison, as I found the nest today, wanted to deal with it today (needed to work on somthing in the loft!), and had no poison!

[Roger Mills]

Oh well, sounds like you've fixed it, anyway!

Roger

[Suz]

Hee hee hee. Sorry. But hee hee hee!

[Ina Whirl]

[Alan Campbell]

On a different note, how does you equipement cope with the heat up there ?

I have a couple of servers in the garage and a hub/router which used to be in the loft, but because of the heatwave that we had this summer I had to move it to the garage.

The hub/router was getting very hot in the attic. The servers in the garage were overheating too, but it was a bit cooler in there. I had to switch the whole lot off when we had the really hot weekend.

Alan

[Andy Hall]

I do this and have a cabinet built to contain the servers, networking routers, switches and UPS. This has ventilation directly from the outside with fans bringing air in and out. There is then a thermostatic controller which alters the fan speeds to maintain a reasonable temperature. Obviously in very hot weather the temperature will rise with the air temperature but it was OK through the hot spell and over ten degrees cooler than the surrounding loft space. .andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[Conrad Edwards]

Take it to a repair guy and complain you can hear it buzzing when you use it, and can he take a look?

[PoP]

You got something against this repair guy? ;)

Pop

[Langis]

That's actually pretty minor, I think. My parents discovered a wasp nest in their roof, square metres were pulled out!

I had a smaller nest in my loft, but I manageed to close off all the access points (also treated these areas with a repellant) - eventually they gave up. They are *excellent* at munching through things mind you, devoured a good deal of duck tape ;-)

-- S i g n a l @ l i n e o n e . n e t