Summer is the perfect time of year to get out of the house. It is great for swimming, camping, hiking, fishing, boating, and cookouts aplenty! But, this is also the time of year when stinging insects can be a pain in the buttocks, quite literally. If you're not watching where you sit down, you could have an unfortunate encounter with a stinging pest. Here is the short list of usual suspects you're likely to run into around your Nashville home this summer.
Yellow Jackets
These aggressive black and yellow insects are the worst. They are wired to be a problem for us. Yellow jackets are fierce nest protectors and easily agitated by vibrations. All you have to do to get a swarm of yellow jackets to attack is mow your lawn near a ground nest.
Yellow jackets eat sweets and meats, so any smell coming from your property is likely to draw them in. They are attracted to the smell of an open garbage can, flowers, perfumes, juice, fruit, meats cooking on the grill, and more. The only real solution is to have routine inspections and nest removal performed. When your property is free of nests, there is much less chance of unwanted encounters with yellow jackets.
Paper Wasps
This is another stinging pest that can be aggressive, though not nearly as aggressive as a yellow jacket. They are also rude intruders. At this point, there is probably a good chance that you've gotten rid of at least one starter nest from the eaves and roofline of your home, garage, or shed. It is also common to find these nests tucked up in a corner of a porch.
If you're not familiar with paper wasps, they are between 5/8 and 3/4 of an inch long, and brown with yellow markings or brown with reddish markings. The nests they build are oblong and gray.
For the most part, paper wasps don't bother people but, if you have the misfortune of disturbing a nest, you could have a swarm of very unhappy paper wasps attacking.
Mud daubers
These sleek, black and yellow insects are between 1/2 an inch to a full inch in length and are easily distinguished from yellow jackets by their tiny abdomen and sleek waist. It is a good thing to tell mud daubers from yellow jackets because mud daubers are solitary insects and do not swarm or give chase like yellow jackets and paper wasps. However, it is still possible to sit on them or aggravate them enough to sting you, so be cautious.
If you need nest removal for your Nashville home, call the pest experts here at All-American Pest Control. With All-American, you'll get friendly, industry-leading pest control every time. And, when it comes to stinging pests, that is the only kind of pest control to have.