insectpest-control
I live in semi-detached house and since some time I have encountered some wasps in my bedroom. It is placed on 1st floor (house has 2.5 floors) and I have encountered them only at night/late evening. I haven't seen nest yet, but I think that it has to be somewhere near (as it needs to see the light or something that attracts them only at night).
What is the easiest way to locate where the nest is that I can call service to remove it from my neighbourhood?
A $3 can of wasp spray will do the trick. Hit them at dusk, soak down the nest. The nest will be empty come morning. Some sprays say on the label that they will repel wasps for a couple of months. I always carry several cans of spray in my truck as I run into them constantly when working on houses. Go get um !!!!
We have fought this problem in our rentals before with success using the following techniques.
What doesn't work: Foggers. We treated the rental for MONTHS with weekly applications of foggers - 3 or 4 anti bedbug foggers per floor - hundreds of dollars spent - and the tenants had to leave the building for half a day every week and then deal with the stink and the toxic residues left behind. Not fun, and didn't work at all because bedbugs DON'T hang out where the fumes can get to them.
So, what do you need to do?
First, buy insect resistant, zippered mattress covers. These are usually some kind of plastic. You wrap each mattress in its own cover and zip it shut tight, sealing the bedbugs within the mattress inside. You must take care not to rip these covers or the bugs can get out again. This is done during the treatment process and for some time beyond.
Second, and this is the big step - Treat your entire house with diatomaceous earth (DE). DE is a non toxic, non pesticide means of controlling pests. It's a crushed silica product that is effective in killing not via poison, but by cutting the outer membrane of small insects.
Unlike most dust/powder which is smooth from erosion, DE has microscopic sized jagged edges. Many types of insects have an external shell which is coated with a kind of mucous membrane which helps them retain water. DE slices that membrane to shreds, and the bugs lose all of their moisture to evaporation, so they die of dehydration, NOT poison.
You can buy food grade DE online. It's safe to use around the house, and you can even dust your pets with it (keep away from the face, of course). We have three dogs and when fleas get in the house, we dust the animals and the areas they sleep with DE.
Now bedbugs are not jumpers, so the key with dealing with them is getting the DE where they live and where they travel.
Where they live: Your furniture. Those mattress covers? Open em up and dust both sides of the mattress LIBERALLY with DE, then close it up again. The bedbugs will get coated in it as they crawl around looking for an escape.
Your sofa/chairs - if you can, dust the INSIDES of larger pieces of furniture - heavily. Also apply dust in all the cracks and crevices.
Remove the wall plates - use a dusting sprayer like this:
and spray that dust into all the electrical junction boxes - the idea is to force the dust into the walls where bedbugs travel. (They don't like open areas, they prefer tight spaces and corners.
Also put a ring of dust down around your bed posts where they touch the floor, along the edges of the walls. Dust your carpets with it to.
I personally bought my supplies at Dirtworks ( http://www.dirtworks.net/Diatomaceous-Earth.html ) - I bought 2 five pound bags of food grade DE (which was 1 bag too many, honestly), a few puffer bottles, the glimmer sprayer, and we did ONE heavy application all over the entire property (we even dusted the lawn with the sprayer) and never had a bedbug complaint again.
Best Answer
I suggest you look around the perimeter of the house paying special attention to areas where the foundation meets the sill.
Those nasty wasps or hornets will find a way in a small crack or joint of the sill and build nests under the floor joists, especially if you have ceilings in the basement level. They will also get into the attic under an eave or vent. During the day you will see them coming in and out if you watch carefully.
I encountered a massive nest in a flip house I was working on. Every morning there were a couple of dozen wasps flying around the kitchen and living room. They were actually entering the living space around heat pipes in the floor and around wall electrical outlets. (If they were in the attic, they could enter the house through light fixtures.) I used a stethoscope on the floor to track down the nest, hands and knees crawling across the floor, listening for the "BUZZ". After I isolated the area they were in, it took me days and multiple attacks of grenade type bombs (6 or 8) into the cavity between the ceiling and first floor and several cans (10) of foaming wasp spray shot directly into the outdoor entry point to finally get rid of them.
The piles of dead wasps just outside the entry point got bigger every day. Thousands of them. I eventually sprayed insulation foam in the entry point, sealed it and that seemed to end the problem. Not sure if your infestation can be DIY treated, but if you look around, I bet you can find where they are coming and going in your house.