Wasp and Hornet Removal in Marysville, WA

Wasp and hornet removal in Marysville peaks in a narrow window. Colonies founded by a single overwintered queen in April are five thousand insects strong by mid-August, and that is when the lawnmower finds the ground nest.

The three that sting people here

Western yellowjackets are the aggressive ones, and they nest underground: an abandoned vole burrow in the lawn, a void under a paver, a cavity behind the siding. You will not see the nest. You will see a steady stream of insects going in and out of one small hole. Mowing over it or hitting the wall with a pressure washer is how most people find out.

Bald-faced hornets build the grey paper football hanging from a limb, an eave or a soffit. They are technically a yellowjacket, they are large and black and white, and they defend the nest hard. A nest at the corner of a roof at head height beside the front door is a real hazard and not a project for a ladder and a can.

Paper wasps build the small open-comb umbrella under a deck rail, a mailbox, a porch light or the lip of a gutter. They are the least aggressive of the three and often can be left alone if the nest is away from traffic, because they hunt caterpillars all summer.

What not to do

A local exterminator treats at dusk or dawn, in a suit, with an application method matched to the nest. Ground nests get a dust into the entry, which the returning foragers track through the colony. Aerial nests get a treatment and then removal, so the nest does not draw scavengers or rot in the soffit. Void nests get treated through the entry and then the void gets sealed after the colony is dead, not before.

• Do not spray a ground nest at dusk and then stand over it. Yellowjackets emerge fast and they orient on movement and carbon dioxide.
• Do not plug the entry hole of a wall-void nest. The colony chews inward and comes out inside the house.
• Do not knock down a bald-faced hornet nest from a ladder. Falls from a ladder injure more people than the stings do.
• Do not treat a nest you cannot see the extent of, particularly inside a wall or a soffit.
• Do not attempt any of this if anyone on the property has a known sting allergy.

The season, week by week

April and May: single overwintered queens found nests. This is the moment when a nest is the size of a golf ball and one treatment ends it. Very few people call.

June and July: the colony grows and the workers hunt insects. Wasps are busy and mostly indifferent to you.

August and September: the colony peaks and switches from hunting protein to scavenging sugar. Now they are at the picnic table, the Strawberry Festival food line, the pop can and the fallen plums. Aggression climbs sharply. This is when the stings happen.

October: the first hard cold kills the colony. The nest is not reused the following year, but the site often is, because the conditions that made it good have not changed.

A note on northern giant hornets

Between 2019 and 2021 Washington had confirmed detections of the northern giant hornet in Whatcom County, and the state ran a large trapping and eradication program. In December 2024 the Washington State Department of Agriculture and the USDA announced that the species had been eradicated from Washington and the United States after three consecutive years with no detections.

What that means for a Marysville homeowner: the very large wasp on your deck is almost always a bald-faced hornet or a European paper wasp, and the enormous one is a native western cicada killer or a queen yellowjacket. If you do believe you have seen something unusual, WSDA still maintains a public reporting page, and photographs help.

Reference: WSDA northern giant hornet program.

Read more on yellowjacket season in Marysville, or call 360-233-2008 and describe what you are seeing.

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