Wasps, Hornets and Carpenter Bees in Springfield, MO: How to Tell Which One Is Nesting at Your House and What Each One Calls For
By Jacob Ingledue
Table of Contents
By Jacob Ingledue
Most calls about stinging insects in Springfield start with the same sentence: “I think it’s a wasp.” Sometimes it is. Just as often it is a yellow jacket in a wall void, a bald-faced hornet in a maple, a carpenter bee working on a porch rail, or a bumble bee in a flower pot that nobody needs to do anything about. The right move is different for each, and a wrong guess costs you either a nest that keeps growing or a stinging insect you did not need to disturb.
This guide is organized pest by pest. For each one you get the sign to look for, what is causing it, what is reasonable to do yourself, and a short decision path for when to stop and call someone. Springfield sits on the Springfield Plateau at about 1,300 feet and gets roughly 45 inches of rain a year, which means plenty of green growth, plenty of insects for wasps to hunt, and plenty of old wood for bees to drill. That mix is why this list is long here.
One note up front on scope. Titan Pest Pro treats wasps, yellow jackets, hornets and carpenter bees. We do not treat or remove honey bees, and we do not treat bumble bees. Honey bees go to a local beekeeper. If you are not sure what you have, read on, because the first section is a sorting key.
Stand well back, in daylight, and watch the nest or hole for a few minutes. Look at four things.
If your answers point to honey bees, a cluster or a steady stream of bees entering a wall, skip ahead to the section on what we do not treat. If they point anywhere else, the sections below tell you the next step.
A flat, open comb of gray paper cells, usually hanging from a single stalk, no bigger than a hand early in the season and much bigger by late summer. Adults cling to the comb with their legs hanging down. You will find them under eaves, inside soffit corners, on the underside of a deck, in the corners of a carport and inside the cap of a mailbox post.
A single queen that spent the winter tucked into a crack, a wood pile or an attic corner starts the nest in spring and raises the first workers herself. Paper wasps pick sheltered, dry, undisturbed spots, and the south and west faces of a house stay warm enough that a nest started in May can be the size of a dinner plate by August.
A small nest, the first weeks of the season, in a spot you do not walk past, is often left alone. These wasps are less aggressive than yellow jackets and hornets as long as the nest is not bumped. The thing to watch is traffic. A nest by a front door, a grill, a swing set or a window you open will get disturbed, and a disturbed nest is when people get stung.
Is the nest smaller than your hand and out of the way? Watch it. Is it near a door, on a ladder-only spot, or has anyone in the house had a bad reaction to a sting before? Call. Whether a sting is dangerous for a particular person is a question for your doctor.
Fast, buzzing flight at ground level, in and out of one small hole in a lawn, a flower bed edge or a bank. Or the same traffic going into a crack beside a window, a gap under a porch step or a loose piece of siding. Yellow jackets get pushy around soda, meat and sweet drinks in late summer, which is the sign most people notice first.
Yellow jacket colonies grow all season. A nest that nobody noticed in June has hundreds of workers by the end of summer, and the workers switch from catching insects to scavenging sugar and protein as the season turns. They gather around garbage cans, pet food bowls, outdoor dining spots, and anywhere a fallen apple or a sticky bottle sits.
In older Springfield houses with gaps in the foundation, loose mortar or sagging siding, the colony will use a wall void as the nest. You will not see the nest. You will see the traffic, and sometimes brown stains or buzzing from inside the wall on a warm afternoon.
This is the one to leave alone as a do-it-yourself project. A ground nest is under pressure from a mower or a foot, and a wall nest is out of reach and unseen. Spraying the hole in daylight is the classic mistake, because the guards pour out and the ones inside look for another exit, sometimes through drywall.
Ground hole or wall entrance with steady traffic? Call, and tell us where it is and what time of day you saw it. Single wasps around the picnic table and no nest in sight? That is foraging. Clean up and cover food first, and call if they keep coming back from the same direction.
A gray, rounded paper nest, anywhere from a grapefruit to a basketball and larger by fall, hanging from a branch, a gutter corner, a utility box or a gable. The insects are black with white on the face and noticeably bigger than a paper wasp. You can usually see them standing guard at the entrance.
This is the one most people mean when they say “hornet.” In truth it is a large yellow jacket relative, and it builds a new nest every spring. The queen picks a spot high and open, often a tree edge or a roofline. Springfield’s mature trees give her plenty of choices, and the nest grows slowly until midsummer, then quickly.
These insects defend the nest hard, and they go for the face. Do not throw things at the nest, hit it with a hose or knock it down. They do not wait until you are done to respond. Vibrations on the branch or the wall are enough to bring them out.
Nest within a stone’s throw of a play area, a walkway, a deck or a line of work such as hedge trimming? Call. Nest far back in a woodlot where nobody goes? It will die out at first hard frost. The old nest will not be reused, so you can take it down in winter if you want it gone.
A perfectly round hole about the width of your finger, drilled into the face or underside of bare wood. A little yellow-brown stain or a streak of pale sawdust below it. A large, glossy black bee hovering near you, darting at your head and then hovering again. That hovering is almost always a male, and a male has no stinger. The female can sting, but she rarely does unless she is handled.
Carpenter bees do not eat wood. A female drills a gallery to lay eggs in, one cell at a time, and she packs each cell with pollen. The holes are almost always in wood that is bare, weathered or lightly stained rather than painted, such as cedar rails, deck boards, the ends of a pergola, fascia boards and the arms of a swing set. Many Springfield decks and porch rails have enough cracks and unfinished edges to be perfect. The same galleries get reused year after year, and they get longer each time.
Woodpeckers sometimes tear up the wood later to get at the larvae, so a neat round hole can become a ragged gouge.
A dust treatment in the hole and a seal once the bees are gone is the normal approach, but the timing matters. If you plug the hole while a bee or larvae is still inside, she drills out another way.
One or two holes in a fence rail you do not care about? Leave it or treat it yourself and paint over. Many holes on the front porch, the fascia or the pergola you just built? Call, because repeated damage is structural over time and treating every gallery and sealing it is a job done in order.
Mud daubers are thin-waisted, dark and long, and they plaster tube-shaped mud nests on walls, garage ceilings and under bridges. They hunt spiders and almost never sting. A mud nest on the wall of a shed is a chore, not an emergency. Scrape it off in winter.
Hover flies are another common mix-up. They have two wings, not four, no stinger, and they hang in the air near flowers. If it is feeding on a flower and not guarding anything, it is probably a pollinator.
Honey bees are managed and protected by a lot of people for good reasons. If a swarm lands on a branch or a colony moves into a wall, the right answer is a local beekeeper. We will refer you. We have a separate page on what to do when a honey bee hive is in your house, including the signs that point to honey bees rather than wasps.
Bumble bees nest in the ground, in old rodent burrows and in compost piles. They are slow, round, loud and fuzzy. The colony dies out each fall and does not return to the same hole, so there is nothing to treat. We do not treat bumble bees. If one is nesting by your door, mark the spot and give it a few weeks, and call us if you are not sure what you are looking at.
The page on bees or wasps in the wall walks through how to tell them apart.
Queens come out of overwintering in the first warm weeks of spring and start nests. April and May are the easiest time to deal with a nest, because it is the size of a golf ball and has only a few insects. By June the colony has workers. By August it may have hundreds, and by September the colony is at its peak and the workers are foraging more widely, which is when most stings happen. First hard frost ends most colonies, and the queens leave to overwinter.
Carpenter bees emerge in spring and are active through early summer, so look for holes then and again in late summer when the new bees come out. Yellow jackets and bald-faced hornets are more visible in late summer and early fall.
Preventing a nest is mostly about small gaps. Caulk cracks around windows and trim, screen vents, and keep loose wood and clutter off the sides of the house where queens overwinter.
When a nest is near a door, high up, in a wall or in the ground, a licensed technician is the better choice. We start by identifying the insect, because the approach depends on whether it is a wasp, a yellow jacket, a hornet or a carpenter bee. Then we locate the entrance or nest, plan the approach so that we are not working directly into the flight path, and treat at a time of day when the colony is calm. We select and apply products according to label directions and explain preparation, re-entry and any household-specific precautions before service.
After the colony is gone, we remove or knock down the nest where that is practical, seal entries where it makes sense, and tell you what drew the insects to that spot. If you are already on a recurring plan, many of these show up during routine visits, and the every-two-months plan is built to catch nest starts early. For the full details on how we handle wasp, hornet and carpenter bee jobs, see our wasp removal service, and for everything we do around town, see pest control in Springfield, MO.
To talk it through in person, book a free inspection.
How can I tell a wasp from a bee?
A wasp has a narrow waist, a smooth shiny body and legs that dangle in flight. A bee is rounder and fuzzier, and often carries pollen. Wasps also hunt other insects, while bees visit flowers.
Are carpenter bees dangerous to my house?
One or two holes do little harm, but the galleries get longer each year and woodpeckers can make the damage worse. Treat the gallery, then seal and paint the wood so they have less reason to return. A question about structural wood in an older house is worth a look from a pro.
Will you remove a honey bee hive?
No. We do not treat, remove or relocate honey bees. We refer you to a local beekeeper.
Do you treat bumble bees?
No. Bumble bee colonies die out each fall and do not reuse the nest. If one is nesting somewhere you cannot avoid, call us and we will help you work out the best way to handle it.
Is a wasp nest still dangerous in winter?
An old nest is empty once the colony has died, and the insects do not reuse it. It is fine to take down after the first hard freeze. Check it first from a distance to make sure nothing is still moving.
What should I do if someone in the house is allergic to stings?
Talk to your doctor about what to keep on hand. Do not wait for a nest to be disturbed, and call us as soon as you see one near a doorway or a play area.
When is the best time to deal with a nest?
Early. A nest in April or May is small and easy to handle, while one in late summer may hold hundreds of insects and is more defensive. If you spot one near a door at any time of year, call.
