I studied entomology in college so wasps don't get me worried. It's easy enough to rid a washer or dryer of insects.

In  1973 I was 22 and renting a tiny 1 bedroom cottage in Petaluma, Calif.  One night in the Summer on a particularly hot night during a heat wave I woke up from a sound sleep because I’d been stung by something.  Before I could turn the light on I was stung 3 more times.  When the light came on I was petrified at the sight of hundreds of yellow jacket/wasps droning about 1” above my bedspread and then falling down like they were drugged.

I leaped out of bed in one fell swop and dashed out of the bedroom, swiftly closing the door behind me.  There was about a 1.25” gap under the bedroom door so I jammed towels underneath the door to keep the wasps in the bedroom.

In the morning I had to open the door because the bathroom was off of the bedroom and I had to get ready for work.  Miraculously, the wasps had retreated.  So, I took a bath and dressed for work.  Then I went to the landlady's house at the top of the hill that the cottage was located on.  I told Leona about the wasps and she promised that she would call an exterminator right away and get the wasps taken care of.

Well early that afternoon Leona called me at work and told me that she had called every exterminator in Petaluma and they were all booked up with similar calls from all over town from others that had wasps invading their homes and that they wouldn’t be able to come out to my house for a couple of days.  They told Leona that I could get a can of Black Flag or Raid Flying insect killer and spray it up into the  attic and that should get rid of the wasps.

So on my way home that evening  got a can of insecticide and opened the trap door in the ceiling to the attic and sprayed the entire can of insecticide up there and crossed my fingers.  Luckily this was the end of the attack of the wasps!

Apparently, when there are several days of extreme heat if there are any wasp nests in an attic the wasps will attempt to get out of the extremely hot attic to escape the heat and since there was a hole large enough for them to get through the bedroom ceiling thats where they migrated to.

It’s a good thing that I wasn’t allergic to wasp's, it could've turned out pretty bad.

Eddie

Angus,

We had a ground nest of wasps behind our house about 10 years ago.  I tried everything that I read online to get rid of them, like spraying and entire can of Raid Flying Insect spray in the hole and then I tried pouring a whole gallon of ammonia in the hole with no success.  Then I called Animal Control to se what they suggested.  They advised me to call Sonoma Marin Mosquito Abatement and Control, a service that every property owner in Sonoma and Marin Counties pays for annually with an assessment on our property tax bills.  They came right out the next day at no charge and eradicated the wasp nest for good.

Ryne,

I was scared but not to the point of being paralyzed because I had never really been terribly afraid of bees or wasps.  When I was 5 years old  I used to catch bees and wasps in an empty Best Foods Mayonnaise jar that I’d placed grass in the bottom of and punched holes in the lid.  I’d take the jar back to my bedroom and watch the bees/wasps for a day or two and then release them back outside.  But I’ll tell you what, I’d certainly not like to go through the experience of waking up to a bed covered in wasps again.

 Thirty five years ago at the condo HOA that we lived in before we moved to our current home one of the homeowners had an experience like Angus described in post #6 where wasps had gotten into the walls and built a massive  nest that eventually collapsed through the sheetrock into their living room.  It was a costly repair for the HOA and a terrible experience  for the homeowner.

Eddie