Professional pest controllers are trained in the safe use of insecticide, they wear masks and use specialised targeting equipment when treating wasp nests, but working with insecticidal dust can still be a messy business.  So what happens in the DIY market?

As a professional pest controller, I treat in excess of 500 wasp nests every season. Many of my customers have wasp nests every year but an increasing proportion call me after they have used DIY powders and foams that have not worked. The familiar sight of excessive spillages of insecticidal dust in roof gutters, over tiles and on patio slabs when I arrive at residential properties has bothered me for many years. And with social media increasingly awash with amateur films showing people balancing precariously on ladders to treat their own nests with a variety of homemade application devices, I knew there was a better way.

So as the general public looked to vacuum cleaner components, sink unblockers, brooms, bin liners, tyre inflators, blowtorches and even fireworks to help them kill their wasp nests, I embarked on a 5 year product design journey to bring the Kerminator® Wasp Lance to market.

Most wasp nests in residential properties are found in elevated positions under roof tiles, soffits, in wall cavities, eaves and roof spaces of sheds and garages. Applying the ‘throw enough mud at the wall, some of it will stick’ philosophy, DIYers often discharge excessive amounts of insecticide from 300g squeezy bottles to find the entrance to a nest and hopefully penetrate it. Fundamentally, the biggest issue with the bottles of powder sold widely online and in garden centres, is the lack of targeting and the need for consumers to get within mere centimetres of a live nest during use, increasing the risk of them getting stung whilst inevitably breathing in some of the insecticide themselves.

The Kerminator® Wasp Lance addresses all of these problems.  A one-handed, pressured trigger delivers a measured dose of insecticide into a wasp nest at speed. In one shot, the insecticide is expelled into the nest before the wasps realise that their nest is under attack, which for the user, allows for a much calmer exit strategy. Extendable carbon fibre poles put a safe, 2-3 metre distance between the user and nest, whilst the flexible end tube allows users to target the entrance of a nest from any angle. Pre-filled cartridges of insecticide also ensure that the user does not come into contact with toxic insecticidal dust during assembly and treatment.

Fundamentally, the Kerminator® Wasp Lance bridges the gap between current DIY wasp nest treatments, and the application devices professionals use out in the field. I do not advocate the destruction of all wasp nests; wasps have an important ecological role to play; but whilst millions of 300g bottles of wasp nest powder are sold in the UK each year, and the search term ‘how to kill a wasp nest’ continues to serve up a multitude of amateur videos on YouTube, I believe it’s about time everyone is able to safely treat their own wasp nest like a pro!