Wasps!

[Stephen Thomas]

I have had gourds up for 9 years now. Never had a problem with wasps until this year. If it is not in one gourd it is in an other. I keep killing them and removing the nest but they seem to come back. They are worst than the rat birds.

[Bill Hyde]

Stephen, there are two distinct species of paper wasps living in northern Illinois. Our native Common Paper-wasp (Polistes fuscatus) is brown and tan, while the more aggressive European Paper-wasp (Polistes dominulus) is black and yellow. The latter was first recorded in Massachusetts in 1980 and has been spreading across the northern tier of States ever since. Look at
<http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Au ... n.bpf.html. for a good picture and description.

I discovered some of the European Paper-wasps in my yard in March when I was cleaning out a nest box used last year by a House Wren family. While carefully removing the sticks and twigs from the box I noticed a half dozen or so wasp queens at the bottom of the nest, waiting for warmer weather when each could kill a queen at an established nest.

If left unchecked, the nest could be enlarged from season to season and become quite large over time.

If you have some of these European Paper-wasps, you should wear leather gloves when doing your gourd clean-outs.

This is the message you are probably not happy to read. Good luck.

[Stephen Thomas]

Bill,

Thanks for the info. I will remove the pre-nesting material in the gourd and see if any are at the bottom. If so they will be terminated.