Wasps?

[D.M. Procida]

I've just been to put some more rubbish up in the loft, and I was a little alarmed to discover what appear to be dead wasps littered around. They're wasp-wasted, anyway, with a smooth black and yellow abdomen, and furry thorax and head, though I'm not sure what they actually are.

Some of them are just dead, but others appear to be tightly wrapped in a thin filmy covering, as though they were new wasps packaged for sale. I couldn't see any live ones, or hear any.

Any idea what these are, and what ought to be done to avoid an infestation problem?

Thanks,

Daniele

[NumptyDumpty]

Hoover the buggers up and keep an eye on things in the spring.

[Set Square]

Have a close look around for any little chinese-lantern-shaped papier mache objects hanging from the rafters. Queen wasps spend the winter in these and then emerge in the spring (or sometimes even earlier if we get a warm day) ready to start a new colony.

If you find any "lanterns", give them a liberal dose of wasp killer and then scrape them off the rafters and destroy them. The bodies you found may be queens which came out too early and then died when it got cold again.

[Sneezy]

"Set Square" wrote in news:c1t9r1$1m118h$ [e-mail]:

Yeah - found a queen one morning in my bathroom. Huge thing She'd taken a liking to the air freshner and was sat, sleepily, on top of it. Didn't last long - 3 second burst of wasp killer. I'd still like to know how she got in :-S

[Dave Liquorice]

They are dead don't worry about 'em. Sweep or hover them up and look around for a nest. Possibly tucked right down in the eaves and in size anything from a ping pong ball on a stalk through to a couple of feet across. Beige in colour and papery in texture (indeed it is effectively made of paper). Remove it if you like and examine they are beautiful bits of work, at this time of year the only live wasp your likely to encounter is a queen in one of the ping pong balls or crawling about rather drowsily. Old nests are not reused.

When it gets warmer say April/May go back up and give the entire roof void a liberal spray with a domestic fly/wasp killer.