Wasp nest in loft

[misuel]

I have found a large wasp nest in my loft. About the size of a holdall. Some wasps still alive but very slow. what should i do. will the wasps return next year?

[John_M]

If they're not causing a problem, I would just leave them alone. I don't think that wasps return to their old nests the next year, but I may well be corrected on this.
If you leave them alone, they're likely to leave you alone, although they can get aggressive if they feel threatened by you going near the nest.
I would have thought they'd all be pretty torpid this time of year anyway.

[Lacerta]

We had a Wasps nest in the loft last year and the year before, on the whole they did not cause us any problem. I'd have preferred to have left them alone as we did in the previous year, but we did notice that because we had lighting recessed into the ceiling upstairs, a few start getting inside the house as the nest started to breakdown last year. About 50% were males which are stingless, but the remainder were Queens which definately are not. In the end we did get a pest controller out as we were more concerned about our daughter being stung.

As far as I understand it is true that wasps will not return to their old nests, however the ones in our house built a new one next to the old one from the previous year.

I think if they are not bothering you, just let nature take its course, it might be worth looking at where they are getting in once the nest has died.

Hope this helps.

[Kleftiwallah]

If the wasps finally vacate next year, you could think of donating it to a local school (memories of the 'nature table' here). Cheers, Tony.

[Dorts]

Hi misuel, welcome to WAB. You needn't worry about the nest as all worker wasps will die during the winter. The only wasps that survive are the Queen wasps; Queen wasps hibernate during the winter inside the old nest or inside a small 'nest' they make specially for that purpose.

You can safely remove the nest in the spring as the wasps will never return to it.
Dorts.