Over the months that the wasps were active, we found that it worked for us! Yes, we still have an occasional wasp, but the overwhelming buzz at dinner time was over. We use our back patio almost 12 months out of the year. We relax, use it for entertainment, and eat most of our suppers out there. Nothing is more annoying than wasps buzzing around while we are trying to eat! They may be Nature’s own pest control, keeping other insects in check, but boy are they irritating!

A few years back, my wife Tammy saw an internet post that recommended hanging a wasp nest decoy on our back porch to deter wasps and decided to give it a try. What was there to lose except some time and cheap materials that we had lying around the house. All she needed was some string, a paper sack and a few handfuls of plastic bags. This decoy is supposed to keep other wasps away from the vicinity of the fake paper bag nest because they don’t like confrontation with other wasps. Even if it didn’t work, it might be just a conversation piece.

First, she filled a gallon size paper sack with the plastic bags and tied a string around the neck of the paper bag. She shaped the paper bag filled with the plastic bags into an oval shape, like that of a wasp’s nest and hung it in an upper corner of our patio with extra string. Did the decoy nests work? For us they did, with an occasional one buzzing around.

Later, I came across an article discussing if decoys worked. The results were inconclusive. The wasps could tell the difference. Paper bags lack any smells or chemical cues that would indicate their nest and do not have worker wasps defending them. While wasps are highly visual insects, the simple shape of an object isn’t enough to deter them. Because wasps chew up materials like paper and wood to make their nests, a paper bag represents just another construction material for nest building and would encourage more wasps.

Why not give it a try!!! If nothing else it will be something fun to do with the kids, kinda like a science project or just a conversation piece at your next get together.