A small wooden shed on the Route de Revel in Toulouse held a nasty surprise: a wasp nest roughly 30 centimetres across, housing close to 2,000 insects. Sébastien Sieurac, owner of the pest-control company DD Frelons, sized it up before suiting up to deal with it.
Sieurac, who has worked in the trade since 2004, pulled on rubber boots, a heavy-duty suit and a hood fitted with a protective grille before entering the shed. He described it as his lightest outfit. He also wore connected Meta glasses and carried an electric powder lance attached to a reservoir filled with a permethrin-based insecticide. He said a nest of this size required about 30 grams of the powder.
The call had originally come in as a hornet alert. Sieurac said that is very common, explaining that hornets often circle wasp nests while hunting them. The insects inside turned out to be Germanic wasps, one of the most widespread species in France. He said the species is carnivorous, catching flies, caterpillars and mosquitoes to feed their larvae, before shifting toward sweet foods at the end of summer.
He stressed that an overlooked nest like this one carries real risk, saying that a child walking into that shed without noticing the nest could face a truly terrible situation.
Over in minutes
Sieurac knelt and squeezed into the narrow shed. Almost as soon as the powder began to spray, hundreds of wasps poured out and surrounded him within seconds. He had explained earlier that the insects follow pheromones deposited on a handler's suit. The powder is pushed by air deep into the nest, killing the insects inside quickly. Those that had left the nest to hunt would return and be contaminated on contact.
Once the treatment was done, the nest was left in place to decompose naturally. Sieurac noted that a Germanic wasp nest of that size is rarely seen.
At DD Frelons, wasps and hornets together account for nearly 70 percent of revenue during the four summer months when the insects are most active. For the rest of the year, the Toulouse company focuses mainly on rat control and the removal of other pests. Even so, Sieurac said wasps remain the dominant job every summer.
