Sask. man confronts massive wasp nest with shop vac

A Pilot Butte, Sask. man used a shop vac to go toe-to-toe with a horde of wasps and documented the result on social media.

Marty Seymour was at a loss at how to deal with a massive wasp lurking nest under his house and took to social media for suggestions on how to deal with it.

Seymour’s wife first noticed the nest on Sunday night.

“Of course, she ran for the hills because she wanted nothing to do with it, so we deferred this to me,” he said.

Initially, Seymour said seeing the wasp nest was terrifying.

“It’s a basketball-sized thing of stinging things,” he said.

Seymour then took to the social media platform, X, formerly known as Twitter, to get some ideas on how to deal with it.

“Part of it is I knew it would be fun. I way underestimated how fun it would be. The first couple of posts were to use a flamethrower or sell the house,” he said.

But one of the suggestions involving a shop vac seemed to have potential, with one user suggesting Seymour place a shop vac with an extension near the nest and let it run all day.

You can see the plan in action for yourself, using the player above.

“I filled the vacuum full of wasps. I didn't know what to do with the vacuum,” he said. “I just doused it with spray and it was it was kind of uneventful after that … I waited a day to empty the shop vac. No way I was touching [it] for a day.”

Seymour said he never called a pest control company because he wanted to follow through with it on his own.

“It was my pride,” he said. “Once you put the post out that you’re asking for help, you kind of gotta follow through with it and give it a try,” he said.

Shawn Sherwood, branch manager at Poulin’s Pest Control in Regina, said seeing wasp’s nests under homes is common at this time of year.

“In the spring, the juvenile Queen's wasps, they come out of their hibernation and they find a place under a piece of bark or underneath the side of your house or something to hibernate over the winter,” he explained. “They're looking for a sheltered area and they will build a nest there.”

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“This time of year, the nests have probably got 1,000 individuals in them already because they've been going since April, and they're getting bigger and bigger.”

Sherwood said the rule of thumb when dealing with a nest is to use a spray or a dust, depending on the situation.

“If you can see the nest, the grey paper nest, you use a spray. If you can't see the nest, in other words, you're going into a crack or crevice, you use dust,” he said.

While they do have recommended ways to deal with a wasp’s nest, Sherwood said the plan to shop vac the wasps was not a bad one.

“If you've got the ability to do that, then it will certainly work. There's no question about that,” he said.