How To Prevent Grass Carrying Wasps

To prevent grass-carrying wasps, you’ll need to repel them, block off their frequent areas, and keep your garden clean. While they are beneficial insects, they still can be a nuisance if too many are in your lawn. Through proper lawn care and maintenance, you can keep grass-carrying wasps off your lawn with ease.

How To Identify Grass-Carrying Wasps

To identify grass carrying wasps let’s start by discussing their appearance. For instance, they are medium-sized and have a black thorax, abdomen, and head. Their wings tend to be light brown or medium in color.

Like many solitary wasps, they are docile and don’t act aggressively towards humans. Even if a human was to enter their nest, these wasps don’t retaliate in a predatory manner.

Additionally, you can identify them based on what they eat. Grass-carrying wasps tend to eat nectar from perennial plants. For instance, they’ll eat pale Indian plantain, Eryngium yuccifolium, and stiff goldenrod.

How To Prevent Grass Carrying Wasps?

Block Off Any Wasp Friendly Areas

Grass-carrying wasps tend to populate near windowsills and tree stumps. The best way to prevent this from happening is by blocking off these areas. By doing so, you reduce the chance of the wasps forming a colony.

If you have wasps in your lawn, start by removing their nests. That way, they won’t repopulate in your area and cause more issues. Blocking off wasp friendly areas will give the solitary creatures the message that they should not stay there.

Remove Food Sources

Grass carrying wasps look for protein-based food. That means, you’ll have to remove leftovers laying around your garden. Cover or remove compost piles, pet food, food leftovers, and anything that might be seen as a food source.

Removing food sources isn’t a surefire way to keep them out of your garden. Grass-carrying wasps can trace the food in the area and search around even if the food has been removed.

In the summer grass-carrying wasps tend to go after sweet foods. For example, unclosed cans and fallen apples are a prime target for the wasps. Make sure that you dispose of any food and close cans to prevent them from swarming the area.

Create Wasp Traps

Your wasp trap will vary in results based on the target area. Grass-carrying wasps can travel extended distances to search for food. For example, the average wasp flies for 275-915 meters from their home nest. Because of this, you can set up wasp traps in smaller areas.

You won’t see a myriad of grass-carrying wasps in the spring. This makes it the best time to start creating the traps. Sometimes, you’ll find the ivory queen wasps, who tend to represent over thousands of wasps within the area.

Where Can I Find and Lure Grass Carrying Wasps?

When managing your garden, make sure that the grass blades and plant stems are standing throughout the winter and late spring. That’s because insects will use the stems to grow and inside you’ll notice small bee pupae lying around.

For best results, cut the stems into large pieces. After you place them on the ground, allow the grass-carrying wasps and other insects to engage with it. Grass blades that are placed on the ground after being cut will have birds use it as nesting material.

Also, you can identify a grass-carrying wasp by their nest. Their nest is designed only for them because they are solitary creatures. Most of the time, you’ll find the nest located on the track of the windows.

Grass-carrying wasps live in rotted tree stumps and abandoned tree nests. Pennsylvania is where most of them reside, so you’re likely going to find the wasp there.

How to Scare Grass-Carrying Wasps Off Your Lawn

After identifying a grass carrying wasp, you’ll have to remove them. If you notice a small cocoon or nest located on your door or windows, it’s best to remove it immediately. This prevents the wasps from growing into a colony and dealing with over 1,000 wasps at once.

In addition, you can use pesticides so the wasps won’t return, but they will understand and move on if you take away their nest. They will register it as their territory being unsafe, and find another place to establish their surroundings.

Make sure you’re safe and choose the right products when removing them. You don’t want to have a toxic product because the odors might affect your home. This area is always affected by small children or pets who don’t know any better.

If you notice that the grass-carrying wasps are adding more nests in the area, you can get a natural insect repellent to keep them away.

Are grass-carrying wasps beneficial?

Despite being a nuisance to humans, grass-carrying wasps have some benefits towards flowers and plants. Like bumble bees, grass-carrying wasps assist in plant pollination. Because of this, having a few grass-carrying wasps are great because they will ensure that all of your plants are pollinated and ready to grow.

Another reason why they are beneficial is because they are predatory towards insects. For example, female grass-carrying wasps can eat grasshoppers and other insects that might invade your plants. While having an excessive amount of wasps is a bad thing, having a few of them will aid in population control in your garden.

Why Do I Have So Many Wasps In My Grass?

There are three reasons why wasps are populating in your grass. First, they might be hunting after larvae or insects that’s placed in the lawn soil. Grass carrying wasps can be seen as beneficial insects and they can be left alone.

Second, they like to look for food that’s been leftover by humans. For example, they tend to look for spilled drinks or fallen fruit that’s on the ground. We’ve all seen wasps flying around the garden, but some lawns have berries and fruits that naturally attract them.

Third, they could be burrowing or nesting. For example, cicada killers are wasps that can be found by the small piles of soil that’s out of the burrows. Many wasps, (i.e. cicada killers) tend to be alone, so their nest will be harder to find than social insects who tend to live in larger colonies.

What’s the Difference Between Adult and Larvae Wasps?

Adult grass carrying wasps have a narrow section that connects their thorax to their abdomen. They have a medium brown and blue set of wings. Their thorax has fine white hairs and they can reach sizes up to 18 millimeters (0.7 inches) long.
Larvae grass-carrying wasps are legless, have a cream color, and start growing inside the nesting cavity. For food, they will feed on prey that’s provided by the mother wasps.

F.A.Q

Are Grass-Carrying Wasps Dangerous?

Fortunately, grass-carrying wasps are not dangerous. Since they are solitary creatures, they prefer to live their lives alone without any interference. In fact, they don’t fight for their nests and will leave their area if they feel threatened.

Do Grass-Carrying Wasp Sting?

The only time a grass-carrying wasp will sting is if they see their prey. For the most part, they only sting when they are defending themselves. So while they are harmless, it’s rare that you’ll be on the receiving end of a wasp sting.