Manchester University students are stepping outside of their comfort zone to help their local community, and beyond, by doing free wasp removals. They safely remove the wasps and their nests without chemicals, enabling them to be used later.
A group of students show up early on a Saturday morning to a private home in North Manchester. Waiting for them is Katy Gray Brown, a professor at Manchester University.
In the back of her car, Gray Brown has several beekeeper suits, visors and gloves. They’re well into the season for wasp nests and the students easily get into their protective gear. This isn’t their first rodeo.
Last spring, Gray Brown was called by an intern whose house was infested with a swarm of bees. She called around and found Green Wasp Removal, a small local business run by a man named James that removes wasps without using any harmful chemicals.
“I also know him, it’s a small town, North Manchester, it’s like 6,000 people," Gray Brown said. "So, I called my neighbor.”
James connected with an area beekeeper and Gray Brown was able to watch them remove the swarm. And it gave her an idea.
"It was fascinating to me and working with these practitioners, they are natural teachers. They were eager to answer my questions and include me in the process," she said. "And, so, I asked; Is this something you could imagine teaching some of our students at Manchester? And immediately they jumped on it.”
Now, the program is in its second year. The wasp survey has a hotline that people can call and report their yellowjackets and bald-faced hornets.
“We were out of the gate," Gray Brown said. "People have a lot of yellowjackets and bald-faced hornets.”
Gray Brown says the program doesn’t just give students the chance to learn, but also educates the community. She says they’re able to teach people about the life cycle of the wasps, the difference between native and invasive species and give people the option to remove them without toxic chemicals.
The benefit of not using chemicals that kill the wasps and hurt the environment is two-fold.
“First, we can remove them from places where they pose a danger," Gray Brown said. "And then also we collect them in a way that allows us to freeze them and then at the end of the season, send them to a lab that collects their venom sacs to use in venom immunotherapy.”
Venom immunotherapy, or VIT, is a long-term treatment for people who suffer from severe allergic reactions to bee or wasp stings. The wasp venom is used to build up tolerance by injecting small doses of venom under the skin.
The team collects the wasps alive and flash-freeze them in dry ice to keep their venom from breaking down. At the end of the season, they send them to a lab that will remove the venom sacs and use them in VIT.
The students secure their suits, each wearing a brimmed hat under their visor to help keep the veil away from their faces. James, who leads the students on every removal, says these particular wasps, Southern Yellowjackets, are smaller but extremely aggressive. They’ll look for any spot they can to get into the suit and sting you.
One of the students produces a roll of duct tape from the back of the car and they take turns taping up the spots where the suit meets their gloves and their shoes, covering any possible entry point. Then they do safety checks.
“What we check on these safety protocol checks are seams and zippers and veils," James said. "These are the things that are most likely to fail on a bee suit so we wanna check those carefully.”
James complimented the students on their commitment to safety. He said they haven’t had a single sting this year – that wasn’t to him.
Once they’re dressed, James shows the students the wasp nest. It’s dug into the ground but some of the “wasp paper” surrounds the hole where a few yellowjackets can be seen leaving and entering. The nest is right next to the walkway leading from the driveway to the house, making it especially dangerous and in need of removal.
When it comes to wasp removals, James tries to encourage people to leave nests alone if they aren’t in a dangerous place. Wasps are a great natural pest control, hunting spiders and insects to feed to their young, and are also pollinators.
It begins to rain and James is worried it will delay their dig, but decides to move ahead with the removal and see if the rain lets up or gets worse. Everything gets covered in a tarp and the students begin to put their equipment together. This includes a customized Shop-Vac hooked up to a collection bottle – a jerry rigged juice container designed to hold the wasps they capture.
Another roll of duct tape is pulled out and Gray Brown joked the operation runs on “duct tape, dry ice and patience.”
“Patience is a big part of why we don’t get stung," James said.
Most of the students are in either environmental or peace studies, or both. Gray Brown herself teaches peace studies and philosophy, things she said overlap with environmental studies.
"For the last four years, really, we’ve found that our students increasingly intersect at common problems from different backgrounds," she said. "So, we’ve been doing more together.”
Over the next hour or so, the students go through the now-familiar process of removing the wasps nest. James guides them when they ask questions or gives tips, but these students are more than prepared. They set up the vacuum with the bottle attachment next to the nest and then, they begin to stomp.
The stomping sends the yellowjackets inside the nest into a panic response, which will lead them to fly out of the nest prepared to attack whatever predator dares to assault their home. In this case, it means those suited-up college students.
None of them even flinch as the wasps come out on attack mode, instead they seem more energized in their stomping, now that they’ve gotten a response. As the yellowjackets fly in and out of the nest, the suction from the vacuum begins to pull them in.
Elise Harter is a junior at Manchester and triple majoring in biology, environmental studies and peace studies. She said there’s an adrenaline rush to removing the nests.
“It’s a little fun, it makes you feel a little powerful to be able to do that and you’ve got wasps all over you and you’re a little scared, but you get through it," Harter said.
Once the amount of yellowjackets coming and going slows enough, they move the vacuum off to the side and begin to dig. The students dig where they felt they got the most response while stomping, searching for the nest. They dig it out piece by piece, placing it in a plastic bin and sealing it once they’ve removed the whole nest.
Gillian Thompson is also a junior, studying biology, environmental studies and peace studies. She signed up for the wasp survey, not entirely sure what it would be like and said she was surprised by how scientific the process is.
“Everything is so intentional and has so much reason behind it, like the essential oil sprays, making sure we use the vacuum and don’t disrupt them," Thompson said. "Everything has a reason.”
Once the nest is removed, the queen is found and the yellowjackets are sealed away, they have to fill the hole back in. The students begin to pile the dirt in while James sprays it with a non-toxic mixture of peppermint oil, lemongrass oil, clove oil and dish soap and water.
“These are scents that wasps cannot tolerate," James said. "So, what we do is we put it wherever the nest was and we treat that whole area. That deters them from coming back.”
The students are offering this service free to anyone in the 46962 zip code in North Manchester through the end of the wasp season.
The Green Wasp Removal YouTube Channel posts regular videos of the team's wasp removals.
