On Aug. 26, Sharon L’Hirondelle and her granddaughter Lily came home to a swarm of wasps on the outside of their Erin Dale Crescent home in the city’s southeast. She recalls her windows covered in the pests. “I was just in absolute disbelief, and we were just shocked and not knowing what to do,” said L’Hirondelle. “(It was) like mini-swarms at the corner of the building.” The wasps were inside the home as well. Since that night, the family and their dog have been staying at a hotel in the city, which the home’s owner, Metis Urban Housing Corporation, put them up in. An exterminator began working on the home Aug. 2, treating both inside and outside. On Monday, they discovered a nest inside the home. “It was just sickening because there’s larva, and I was freaked out,” said L’Hirondelle. “I don’t know how long they were sitting. So that was worrying me.” The nest was located in between the unit’s living room, and Lily’s bedroom. The exterminator covered a small crack in the side of the home where the wasps initially got in through. “Her room is right there (by the nest),” said L’Hirondelle. “It was horrifying. I was like, oh my God, my poor baby.” She says the exterminator took out the nest Tuesday while killing all the wasps in the house. “They told me they took the nest and all the larvae and all the dead hornets, to incinerate them so that there wouldn’t be a repopulation because the larva will survive treatment, depending on their incubation period,” said L’Hirondelle. Seal the cracks Carol Frost, a University of Alberta associate professor in the Department of Renewable Resources who studies wasps says around April the pests begin looking for a place to call home. “Anytime that you have a way for wasps to get into, cracks in your house, that’s a possibility,” said Frost. “Make sure cracks to the outside are closed up, so queens can’t come in and decide to set up their home.” She estimates the hive eventually would have had between 3,000 to 4,000 wasps. One Calgary pest exterminator estimates he has been five times busier this summer taking care of wasps. “The majority of calls are nests that are in the ground when homeowners can’t treat them themselves,” said Jarrod Warkentin of Target Pest Control. “Increase in activity is mostly due to the amount of rain we had this season. “Rain earlier in the season promotes insect activity kind of mid-season.” Warkentin said he takes one to two calls a summer for nests the size of L’Hirondelle’s inside a home. The home has been cleared out and the two have been told they can move back in later this week. Thursday evening, the Metis Urban Housing Corporation sent the following statement to CTV News: “We were told the family heard rustling and scratching sounds in the walls for months, but it was not reported until last month. “We strongly encourage all tenants to report any unusual sounds, scents, or anything out of the ordinary to us as soon as they are aware of a potential issue,” the society said in a statement.
