SHOO! FAQ: Is It Too Late?

Q: Will SHOO! get rid of wasps if there's already a live wasp nest nearby?

A: If you didn't hang your SHOO! early enough in the season, you can knock down newly started nests & the queen will start again elsewhere. There isn't much activity around these new nests, so they can be hard to find. Wasps are more likely to be noticed after nests and populations grow. If there's already an established wasp colony, SHOO! will not persuade them to move away.

Hang your SHOO! anyway & see what happens-- I've had feedback that SHOO! worked with an existing nest nearby-- nature can be tricky!

Wasps will not usually bother us until late summer – they are too busy foraging for building materials and food for the colony, but they're more of a problem when their nests are located near doors, windows, or other high-traffic areas of human activity.

If you have an established wasp nest where you want to spend time outdoors, there are only two practical choices – one is to put up with them, cordon off the area to prevent human contact, giving the insects a wide berth to move in and out of the nest. All but the queen will die as soon as winter arrives and the nest will be abandoned. Unfortunately, the other choice is to kill the wasps.

If you decide to kill the wasps and remove the nest, it's safer to call for professional help. Wasp nests typically have thousands of wasps inhabiting them. They will instinctively & aggressively protect their nest by stinging anything causing a disturbance, release a pheromone that alerts the colony to attack, and fly faster than we can run.

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SHOO! FAQ: Faking It?

Q: Why don’t wasps realize SHOO! is a fake wasp nest? A: They don’t get close enough to it to realize it's a fake wasp nest. SHOO! utilizes wasps’ territorial nature to discourage & redirect - t hey see a SHOO! from 20 feet away: the shape of a wasp’s nest, the horizontal pattern which makes it look fibrous and layered, and they keep away. Wasps can see for long distances, they cannot see red--good color to reduce your visibility outside & in the garden--and even recognize each other's faces! SHOO! does have to resemble a real wasp nest otherwise it wouldn’t work. A nest can be any color from brown through to silver, depending on what they use to build their nests. SHOO! is best left in one location each season- wasps will remember it's there & may not come back to the area at all. Polistes dominulus. (Photos courtesy of Elizabeth Tibbetts) Wasps Don't Forget A Face www.ikanartware.etsy.com ikanartware on Ebay

SHOO!: Faux Sure!

The queen wasp wakes from hibernation in the spring. She begins to build a nest in warm, dry place like your attics, roofs, eaves, walls, BBQ lids or under decks and she can fly up to 50 miles searching for the perfect nest site. This is a great time to fake it- hang your SHOO!s early in the spring & let those queens know they need to move on! She builds a honeycomb-like cell structure out of wood fiber, chewed & glued together with wasp saliva to form a sort of paper mâché material. In each cell of the new nest, the queen lays a single egg, which takes approximately 28-48 days to become an adult worker wasp force. Sometimes (when the queen is still working alone) another queen tries to steal a nest instead of working to make her own. This is one of the reasons why you may find a few starter nests that were never established. Once the queen has five to seven worker wasps to help her, she stays in the nest and lays eggs...

SHOO! FAQ: You Can Never Have Too Many SHOO!s

Q: How many SHOO!s do I need for my property? A: While there are no calculations or scientific data to figure out how many SHOO! wasp nest decoys you'll need, there are some wasp facts and evidence by experience. Wasps have low-resolution, wide-field vision, can see 20 feet away & they rely on visual cues and a photographic memory for navigation. First, place your SHOO! where you have seen nest building in the past. If it can be seen from different directions, that's even better. I placed my first SHOO! on a SW corner of my house and wasps stopped building their nests in my shed located 50ft away. Yet, they couldn't resist the spider web food source & quieter location (I hardly use the 2nd entrance) on the NE side of the house, so they built a nest. Next season, I hung a SHOO! from the soffit on that side of my house & no more wasp nests! If you leave your SHOO! up in the same location, wasps have a 3D photographic memory that they use to navigate...

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