How to Keep Wasps Away from a Wood Deck

Keep food indoors.

Enjoying a snack on your deck can be fun, but it might attract wasps. The easiest thing you can do to keep wasps from showing up is avoid giving them an incentive to show up in the first place. If you’re entertaining guests or just hanging out for the night with family, have dinner indoors before you head out on the deck and don’t leave that bowl of chips out. It’s a myth that wasps will only be attracted to sugary drinks and foods. They definitely hold a preference for items that are high in sugar, but they’ll look into basically any food odor and poke around to see if they like it.

Remove access to the trash.

Keep foraging wasps away by storing trash in the garage. If you keep a garbage bin outdoors, the wasps may pick up on the scent and start hanging around to look for food scraps. Open trash containers also attract flies and other bugs that will attract wasps. If possible, store your trash in the garage or mud room. If it has to stay outside, keep lids on the bins and store them on the opposite side of your home to keep wasps away from your deck. Compost can also attract wasps, so if you keep a compost pile outdoors, aim to place it far away from your deck.

Remove open water sources.

Bird fountains, leaky hoses, and puddles will all attract wasps. If there are any standing water sources available, it may attract wasps. Drain bird fountains if they appear to be attracting more wasps than birds. Make sure that your gutters aren’t leading to an area where water pools up, and cover outdoor water spigots when they aren’t in use. If necessary, level your yard to ensure that puddles don’t develop after heavy rains. If you’ve got a pool, either drain it when you don’t plan on using it, or keep a solid airtight cover on it.

Install insect netting around the deck.

Enclosing your deck with insect netting should keep wasps out. There are insect nets and tents that you can buy from local gardening or home improvement stores. Depending on the shape and size of your deck, you may be able to completely cover the deck in these nets by hanging them from your eaves or gutters. This might be a tall order if you have a really big deck, but if it’s a smaller deck you may be able to line the entire thing with netting.

Set out wasp traps.

Laying traps will catch wasps before they become a problem. You can purchase these traps at any home improvement or gardening store. Set them down around the edges of your porch. If you want to make your own traps, hang a piece of raw fish, liver, or bologna from a string and set it just barely above a container filled with soapy water. The wasps will fall into the water and die. These traps work, but be aware that you’re probably going to kill some beneficial insects in the process. If you notice that you’re killing more honey bees and ladybugs than wasps, stop using the traps. This may have an unintended consequence of attracting more wasps than you’d otherwise see. If you feel like the number of wasps you run into is increasing after you put the traps out, opt for another solution.

Try using outdoor fans to blow them away.

For a temporary solution, set up some fans to blow intruders away. Grab some large standing fans and set them up so that the air blows over your deck and away from your home. Wasps aren’t the smartest, and if a stiff breeze blows them away from your deck, they’re usually just continue flying away from your deck. If you just have a single fan, set it to oscillate back and forth over your deck.

Spot-treat wasps with soapy water.

Keep a spray bottle with you on the porch to kill wasps on site. Fill a spray bottle ¾ of the way with water and add a few squirts of dish soap. Shake the mixture up and spritz any wayward wasps who stumble onto your porch. The soapy water will cause the wasps to die on the spot. If it’s just a lone wasp, the soapy water should kill the wasp immediately. If you’ve got a ton of wasps on your deck though, spraying them may cause them to fly into a frenzy, so be careful! You can use a can of insecticide if you really want, but this is probably going to be the safer option if you’re hanging out on your porch with other people.

Clear a nest out with commercial wasp spray.

If you find a nest near your porch, clear it out late at night. Wasps are most active during the day, so wait until it’s dark out to destroy it. Buy a can of commercial wasp spray and unload the entire thing into the entrance of the wasp nest. If it kills the queen (and it should), the colony will die. If the wasps are still hanging out the next day, repeat the process. For colonies that burrow underground, fill the entrance with a silica aerogel dust. Don’t get closer than you have to. Read the label on the can to see how far back you can stay when spraying the insecticide.

Try a mixture of clove, geranium, and lemongrass to repel wasps.

A combination of these essential oils may keep wasps away. There’s not a ton of science backing this one up, but a lot of folks have found success with this mixture. Fill a spray bottle ¾ of the way with water and add 10-15 drops of clove, geranium, and lemongrass essential oils to the bottle. Spritz the area around your porch and the scent may keep wasps away. You can even use an eco-friendly product that contains peppermint oil.

Go outside later at night.

If you’re really worried about wasps, wait until it’s dark to go out. If you’re thinking about hosting a garden party or having a few friends over, time it so that the event starts later in the day. Most wasp species are inactive at night, and you’re unlikely to run into a horde of angry wasps if you go out on your porch when it’s starting to get dark out. This isn’t a permanent solution, but if you’re only concerned about keeping wasps away every now and then, this might work for you!