Feeling swarmed? Wasp experts explain what's with all the buzz this year
CBC
Pest control technician JS Ouellette says this hot, dry summer has been good for business, with 25 to 40 calls per day to remove wasp nests — roughly four times the typical call volume.
"I am just parked and people will come up and be like, 'hey, do you deal with wasps? I have some,'" said Ouellette. "It's just crazy right now."
He believes the busier than usual season is due to an abundance of aphids — a result of a wet spring and hot summer — which wasps feed on.
Plus, wasps tend to become more active as summer rolls on.
"They tend to be a little nastier towards the end of the season, when the queens start leaving the nest and they know they are going to die," said Ouellette, who works for The Pest Control Guy.
CBC News caught up with Ouellette at a home in the northwest community of Ranchlands, where the homeowner says his tenants noticed a steady stream of wasps near their front step.
"They moved in and the first phone call was, 'we have wasps at our front door'," said Darcy McGregor, the homeowner.
He said that when he lifted the concrete slab, he couldn't see a nest but noticed they were going underground.
"They're hidden, and I just know you can run into lots of trouble if you don't look after them. So I called a professional," said McGregor.
Entomologist John Swann says rather than a spike in wasp numbers, he believes the increased wasp reports are due to more people enjoying the warmer weather and then spotting the pests.
He says aphids are just one source of food, but not enough to create a population boom.
He says a typical nest may have a few hundred wasps — and the larger ones could hold a few thousand.
At this time of year, the flying pests are more noticeable because people are often outside enjoying food or drink. Swann says the wasps are also interested in the food as they try to beef up their colonies before the first major frost.
He calls them the raccoons of the insect world, willing to eat almost anything to survive.
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