Does anyone have any tips for dealing with a wasp’s nest in a mailbox? This is one of the type of mailboxes that opens at the front of the back. The nest is about the size of a golf ball, they’ve just started it.
So far I have done the following:
Gingerly pushed my mail with a rake handle from the front to fall out the back and raked it toward me so I could carry it to safety
Tried to bat it down with a rake but panicked and fled when they started flying around
Came back a few minutes later and sprayed the nest with flying insect pesticide for a brief second and then fled
Based on the range of the spray, I don’t know if I can get 'em without getting really messed up.
Needless to say, I’m a giant wuss, so any way to limit risk of me from getting stung will be super.
Is the mailbox at the street or on your house? If it’s at the street, try spraying from inside your car, and then roll up the window. You should be able to spray from 20 feet away or so.
Look for cans of insect spray for wasps, it has a special nozzle so you can zap them from like 5-7 feet away minimizing your exposure and increasing your escape options.
Seconded for wasp spray. A few years back at a place I worked at we had wasp nest in the nooks of a large storage crate (the metal kind you walk into). There were probably four or five dozen hornets in that thing, so we bought wasp spray and soaked the buggers. There were a pile of little yellowjacket corpses littering the ground in short order.
We did it during the day though (work hours, not much choice) but it worked just fine.
That wasp spray is truly lethal. I get lots of nests around here. Spray it and they’re dead in under five seconds. They don’t come flying at you, either. They’re stunned for a moment and many will just…fall…dead.
This is my reply as an experienced beekeeper. Get a spray bottle adjusted to stream; fill it with warm water and dish detergent; and spray the nest after dark. The wasps are not active at night and you have a good chance of killing them all. The soapy water will kill them with much less or no colateral damage to the environment. I try to avoid the wholesale dispensing of insecticides in the environment.
If it’s the size of a golf ball, you should only have the queen there.
But what you could do is, after dark, pour some petrol into a big bin bag (you only need a little) then cover the mailbox with the bin bag and seal the whole reasonably airtight. The petrol fumes the next day will kill the wasps. Obviously you’ll want to tell your postie that you’re doing this.
I second this. That stuff works great. I have a bi-level deck out back and many hornets try to nest on the underside of it. The stuff works in seconds, and sprays far. You don’t need much of it either, so there’s not a huge environmental concern.
After you dispose of the nest and bodies, wipe out the mailbox with a wet rag and some antibacterial soap to wick away any residual pesticides so the mailman/lady doesn’t get any on their hands.
Somehow I doubt the effectiveness of soapy water, but that poster is a beekeeper, so maybe you could try that. I never have.
We used to put out a cake pan with water and float a stick in it. On the stick would be some meat scraps for bait. Hornets and wasps swim just like a rock.
They would back off the stick to drop and fly and go right to the bottom.
Be careful with the night time hornets are inactive logic. They do come out and fast after dark. I had a nest under the hood of my boat and went in after dark to bag the nest. Well it didn’t go all that good. as soon as i hit it with the flashlight the dog fight was on! I lost
As opposed to the back of the front? (I’m genuinely puzzled as to what this means - I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mailbox to which this description could apply.)
We have a lizard living in our mailbox. There’s a hole in the bottom that leads to the inside of the brick column, I guess. It’ll scare the heck out of you to open the mailbox and have something inside scurry away. The neighbors probably wonder why I’ve taken to knocking on the mailbox door before I open it.
I saw at least two wasps on the outside, but it was even smaller than a golf ball. Curious.
In any case, my first light pass (seriously, I didn’t even think I hit the hive directly) seemed to have discouraged them - no activity when I drove by and looked in from the safety of my car. I went and got some wasp spray anyway, just to be on the safe side. No sign of life when I sprayed it. I’ll knock it down tomorrow.
Xema, sorry, I meant the back and the front – in other words, it has two doors. Maybe that’s another thing that discouraged them - it’s usually closed, of course, but I opened both doors. Iowa wind is generally pretty brisk so I bet that thing turned into a little wind tunnel.
Anyhow, thanks all for the advice - no wasp stings for me!
