With the summer and the high temperatures, the wasps are out. And, little by little, they make their nests. If you find one, above all, do not intervene yourselves! This is the message of Jérémy Toussaint, head of Guêpes-Apens. It intervenes in the Marne and in the Ardennes to eradicate the nests of wasps, hornets and Asian hornets. And the interventions are more and more frequent.
– Marine Protais
“It really is a wasp year”, observes Jérémy Toussaint. And especially in the Marne, where his company records 50% more interventions, compared to last summer. This situation can be explained by the climate of the last few months. “We had a very mild winter, we didn’t have any frosts during the spring, so that favored the development of hornets, wasps and even Asian hornets”, says Jérémy Toussaint.
An intervention at €150, sometimes paid for by the municipalities
No town in the Marne seems spared. On the other hand, depending on the municipality of residence, the care system may be different. Jérémy Toussaint specifies thatan intervention to remove a wasp’s nest costs around 150 euros, “but more and more small municipalities are financing these interventions for their citizens”. He therefore advises to inquire at his town hall before calling on a professional, recalling that “the firefighters do not do anything” this kind of operations.
Guêpes-Apens carries out around thirty operations each day this summer to remove wasp nests, compared to ten to fifteen last year. This Thursday, Jérémy Toussaint was in Loivre, near Reims, to eradicate a wasp nest.
Nests as big as basketballs
Equipped with an anti-bite suit, “in which it is up to 45 degrees”, specifies Jérémy Toussaint, he sets off to attack a wasp’s nest on a roof. After removing several tiles, he exclaims, “That’s it, I found it!” A nest “as big as a basketball”, in which he inserts a sting and injects a white powder. “This powder is based on permethrin, a neurotoxin for all flying insects. So the wasps will contaminate each other”, and thus kill himself.
– Marine Protais
The product must then be left to act for five minutes, before being able to unhook the nest, _“with bare hands”,_says Jérémy Toussaint, all the same equipped with a good pair of gloves.
On the nest, now stuck in a garbage bag, we can clearly see the outer membrane, the cells and the larvae. For Jérémy Toussaint, it was therefore time to intervene. “If we leave the nest in place, it will grow. There will be more and more workers, and we will be more and more invaded and annoyed.” Hence the interest in calling on a professional, to whom it will take about 25 minutes, to eradicate the nest.