PPC115 | Opinion

Alex Wade from BPCA member company, Wade Environmental, spoke at PestEx about a topic that is close to all our collective thoughts and fears. The way we carry out wasp work is likely to change drastically over the next few summers, Alex shares his thoughts with PPC readers. 

What are we going to do about wasps?

Firstly we have to ask ourselves, do we even need to do anything about them? Surely they have a point to their existence beyond causing mayhem? They are, after all, pollinators (if not nearly so successful as their bee-like cousins), they offer waste disposal, clearing away carcasses and other protein-rich debris and, finally, they are nature’s pest controllers. Perhaps we should have a little more affinity for these tiny stripy balls of rage, hated by so many.

After all, there are many species of wasps which aren’t considered pests. They are small, beautiful and frankly terrifying but that’s a story for another time.

What we really need to talk about is the elephant in the room: how do we control pest wasps with the loss of Ficam? (Considered by many to be the only reliable option for management).

What are we currently doing about them?

We have a fantastic solution that seems tailor-made for dealing with large numbers of insects in a confined and awkward space.

For starters, for this purpose, we have historically tended to use dust, a formulation rarely used in any other pest control job but is the current mainstay of wasp control. What makes dust better than liquid? Well, the reason it is good is also the reason that it is terrible at most other jobs: it moves with the slightest breeze.

This is unlike a liquid formulation which, through its physical nature, tends to remain largely where it is deposited. Dust will flow and move around an enclosed space, perfect for voids, even more so for the enveloped nests of wasps. Dust will roll around a corner, down a tunnel and, even after it’s come to rest, can be agitated to move again.

The second big feature of our current control solution is that it uses a chemical with some fairly unique properties. Not only is it highly effective at killing insects, it most notably has a lack of repellence. This means that we can have a deposit which can move freely after deposition, which allows insects to pass recklessly through it.

The combination of these two factors almost certainly facilitates its movement deeper into the nest. And this is the simplicity and uniqueness of its success – it means an effective solution can be deployed without being able to see the nest. We just need to be able to locate the main avenues of movement and ingress to a nest.

What challenges will come from losing these approaches?

Unlike bendiocarb, the majority of insecticides currently on the market are pyrethroids, and exceedingly few of these are dust formulations.

And, unlike bendiocarb, pyrethroids are repellent which, under normal conditions, makes them great tools for flushing insects out of gaps or for treating bed nets to deter mosquitoes. Yet, as previously mentioned, one of the great boons we currently have is the relative lack of agitation caused by these treatments.

With a large number of nests not fully visible or reachable at the time of treatment, the use of a dust that insects will naturally try to avoid can cause significant issues with control. Insects will cease moving through or even around the dust, leading to reduced control or even a total failure as the wasps find alternative paths of movement.

Do we have alternatives?

Surprisingly enough, we do. And they’re not pie-in-the-sky research projects coming down the line (although I am sure there are a couple of those waiting in the wings!). We have options, but the thing is that they don’t look like our current favourites, and if they are used like a direct replacement with no thought for what makes them different, they will fail. 

Even swapping one dust formulation for another comes with sufficient changes in behaviour and tactics that, if we are not careful, will see a persistent failure in control, not through a failure of the product but of our ability to effectively deploy it.

To put this into perspective, if I asked you to hang a picture on the wall, you would probably get out your trusted hammer and nails. Perfect – a tool and a solution tailor-made for hanging objects on walls. Now, what if I tell you there are no more nails being produced, but I still want that picture hung?

You DO still have a tool bag full of screws, and they’ll work for the job, but if you still persist in using that hammer to put the screws into the wall... well, you’ll still get the picture up but do an awful job of it.

It’s not rocket science; it’s hardly even basic science. And yet, we are doing precisely this, aren’t we? We use all our dust formulations and our tools as though they were interchangeable, when we know from training and experience that they are significantly different beasts.

But the world of insecticides is greater than just those contained within dust formulations, so why do we limit ourselves? We have a whole range of aerosols, for example, specifically designed to target nests, some as space treatments, others which will create foams and other insecticidal barriers.

We also have a huge range of liquid formulations. Water-based ones require physical penetration into the nest (not impossible with the right access kit), but others such as emulsifiable concentrates (ECs) (mixed with solvents or ready-to-use (RFUs) that have been pre-formulated this way), prove incredibly effective at being able to dissolve the envelope of wasp nests. They require only the smallest surface to be visible to be able to penetrate and treat from a distance.

We have the tools – we’ve had them for a long time – but the ‘new’ thing that we need is a strategy to deploy them effectively.

Is all of this a good thing?

I do honestly believe that it is because, while this radical operational change will make our lives harder, it will also make it even harder for any two-bit, cut-rate, powder monkey with a ladder.

We’ve seen the adverts on traffic lights or parish billboards: ‘£25 for a wasp nest!’ For them, this is an upsell to their job, pocket money or just cash-in-hand work for a night out on the tiles. For us, these are our jobs and it’s our profession. We couldn’t and shouldn’t sell ourselves so cheaply, but what choice did we have when every ladder jockey had a fire-and-forget system in their back pocket?

After this change, to control nests you’ll need to have a thorough knowledge of the tools to ensure that the right one is deployed in the right situation, the skills to access those nests, and the ability to marry both together to achieve swift and lasting control with no callbacks.

Suddenly, for wasp work we can charge a price that reflects the treatment programme, like any other job we price and do, rather than participate in a screaming, spiralling race to the bottom.

This change puts wasp control back on par with our other work, back into the realm of the professional. Use this time to learn and build these strategies while we have that safety net in place, so come D(ust)-day, we are already well ahead of the game.

Are you changing your treatment plans this summer?
Are you spending this summer working on your wasp management strategies? Are you carrying out your own field research with products you’ve never tried before?
Let us know how you’re getting on and you might feature in the next issue of PPC magazine.
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