Wasps eating our bench!

[ianrb]

We have a very nice out door teak bench which is slowly being eaten by wasps. The damage is only cosmetic and I imagine it would take many, many years before they could eat enough to cause any kind of structural problem. But it is a nice bench & it's irritating that it's being disfigured, it's also irritating that you can't sit on it without having to cope with half a dozen wasps trying to get at their lunch. It there anyway to keep the little blighters away?

PS I know they're not eating it for nutrition, but rather just collecting building material for their nest.

[ianrb]

Mark Benson said:

As you say, they're collecting cellulose to build their nest.

If you can find the nest, you can destroy it (kill it with fire etc. or have a pest controller do it but DIY is really easy, just douse the entrance with insect powder at night for a day or two and they'll track the poison straight in) or paint the bench with something to seal off the wood from the wasps.

We have a teak table they love, and I've tried various products but none seems to stop them - the only solution was to varnish the table, which spoils the effect of the wood but at least means we can eat outdoors again.

Ah good idea! I think I know where the nest is, so I'll give the insect powder a go.

Our bench is/was a very nice one, so I'm not keen on the varnish route for the same reason you identify.

[ianrb]

TheRealFingers99 said:

The strange thing is that they're eating teak (surely harder to digest?): you might try leaving the odd bit of broken pallet lying around, see what happens.

There is about 3 tons of chopped up firewood, a mixture of oak & beech, far closer to the nest than the bench, but they seem to be ignoring that. Although we don't try to sit on the pile of firewood, so maybe we just never spot them.