Wasp Nest Removal in Scarborough: What It Costs

Wasp nest removal in Scarborough typically costs $150 to $400 for a home, with an open nest under a porch or deck at the low end and a yellowjacket colony sealed inside a wall or soffit at the high end. Most nests come off in one same-day visit: we knock the colony down and treat the spot so it cannot rebuild there. It starts with a free inspection that tells you exactly what you have, a calm paper wasp you could leave alone or a yellowjacket colony that will swarm the moment it is disturbed. The work is carried out by our service partner Insectica Pest Control. If someone in the house is allergic, or the nest is bigger than a softball and near a door, do not touch it. Call and stay back.

(289) 806-3934

Wasp, hornet, or bee? How to tell before anyone gets stung

Around Scarborough you are almost always dealing with one of three stinging insects that people lump together, and the difference decides how dangerous the nest is and how it has to be handled. The quickest cut: if the insect is smooth and shiny it is a wasp or hornet, and if it is fuzzy and rounded it is a bee, which is a pollinator and usually a gentler problem best left alone. Among the smooth ones, here is how to read which is which from a safe distance.

• Yellowjacket. Compact and short-bodied, vivid yellow and black, smooth and hairless. They nest in the ground, in old rodent burrows, in retaining walls, and inside wall voids and soffits, so often all you see is a steady stream coming and going from one hole. They turn very aggressive near food, garbage bins, and open drinks, and each one stings again and again. This is the classic late-summer backyard wasp, and the nest that puts people in the emergency room.
• Paper wasp. Slender and longer, with long legs that dangle noticeably in flight. It builds the open, umbrella-shaped nest that hangs under an eave, a soffit, a deck, or a porch roof, and you can see the honeycomb cells from below. Paper wasps are the least aggressive of the three and will mostly leave you alone unless you swat at the nest itself.
• Bald-faced hornet. Larger than a wasp, black and white rather than yellow, and the builder of the big grey enclosed "football" nest you see hanging in a tree or off a wall. The size is the tell: a mature nest can hold hundreds, and hornets are very defensive close to it.
• Bees, for contrast. A honeybee or bumblebee is fuzzy and rounded, nests as a cluster of insects or in a cavity rather than in grey paper, and is a pollinator that is often best left alone or saved alive. If your insect is fuzzy rather than smooth, and there is no grey paper nest, you are looking at a bee, which is a different and usually gentler situation than the wasp work on this page.

If the nest is a closed grey ball, or the insects are streaming out of a single hole in the ground, a wall, or the soffit, treat it as aggressive and keep everyone well back. Paper wasps under a rail are the one case where waiting is sometimes fine. Everything else is a call.

Where wasp nests hide in Scarborough homes

Half the job is finding the nest, because the treatment depends entirely on where it is. Scarborough's housing stock hands wasps a lot of room to work, and the nests turn up in the same handful of places.

• Ground and retaining-wall nests. Yellowjackets move into old rodent burrows, the space under a shed or deck, and the gaps in a stone or block retaining wall. The postwar bungalows and back-splits through Birch Cliff, Cliffside, and Wexford come with deep lawns, mature gardens, and low retaining walls that give ground colonies plenty of cover. You usually find these the wrong way, behind a running lawn mower or with a foot, which is exactly when they swarm.
• Soffits and wall voids. This is the most common call in the older east-end stock. A wasp slips through a gap in a wood soffit, a worn brick joint, or the space around a pipe, and builds inside the cavity, so all you see is insects entering one spot near the roofline. The aging soffits on the Kingston Road and Eglinton East walk-ups are a steady source of these. A soffit colony can chew through the interior finish and end up inside a ceiling or an upstairs room, which is how wasps sometimes turn up indoors.
• Umbrella nests under porches, decks, and eaves. Paper wasps hang their open honeycomb nest under a porch roof, a deck rail, the underside of deck boards, an eave, or a pergola, anywhere dry and sheltered from the rain. The covered porches and big backyard decks common across the Scarborough suburbs give them endless ledges to build on.
• Football nests in trees and on walls. Bald-faced hornets build the large grey enclosed nest in a tree, a tall hedge, or against the wall under an eave, often high up and out of easy reach. The mature trees and the lots that back onto the Highland Creek and Rouge ravines put this cover right at the property line.

The older east-end homes are especially prone to it. Wood soffits, deep porch roofs, and the eaves on a postwar bungalow give paper wasps and yellowjackets sheltered ledges and gaps to build in, and the backyard decks, sheds, and playsets add a dozen more. The harder a nest is to reach, buried in a soffit or three storeys up, the more the job takes, which is the single biggest thing that moves the price.

Why removing a wasp nest yourself is genuinely dangerous

A wasp nest is not the kind of chore you knock off with a can from the hardware store, and the reasons stack on top of one another.

First, wasps sting repeatedly. Unlike a honeybee, which dies after one sting, a single wasp or hornet can sting again and again, and a disturbed nest releases an alarm signal that calls the rest of the colony out to join in. Aim a store aerosol at a yellowjacket nest, miss the hole, and you get a cloud of angry insects and dozens of stings in seconds. Second, disturbing the nest is exactly what triggers the swarm, so the moment you knock, poke, or spray it, the whole colony defends at once. Third, most nests are up high or buried in the structure, which means you are on a ladder or leaning into a soffit when the swarm comes, and the fall does more damage than the stings. Fourth, the calendar works against you: by August and September the colony is at its largest and most defensive, right when families are still out in the yard.

The store-spray problem deserves its own line. A hardware-store aerosol will chase the wasps out of a wall or soffit for an evening and rarely kills the nest inside the void, so you are left with an agitated, partial colony that rebuilds and comes back angrier. The products that actually clear a concealed nest are registered by Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency and are meant to be applied to the label by a trained technician.

How we remove a Scarborough wasp nest

1. Locate the nest and the entry. Insectica's technician confirms whether it is a yellowjacket, a paper wasp, or a hornet, and finds exactly where the nest sits and where the insects are getting in. That decides the approach and the price before anything is treated.
2. Treat to knock down the colony. A Health Canada PMRA-registered product goes straight into an accessible nest, applied to the label. For a soffit, wall, or ground nest, the entry point is treated so returning wasps carry the product into the colony and it dies from the inside.
3. Remove the accessible nest. Once the colony is dead, an accessible nest comes down. A nest buried in a void is left to die out rather than torn open.
4. Treat the void so they do not rebuild. The cavity and entry are treated and, where it makes sense, sealed, because an open soffit or wall gap is an invitation to next year's queen to build in the same spot.
5. Stand behind it. The work carries a two-month guarantee. If wasp activity returns at the same nest within that window, Insectica comes back once at no charge.

Most standard nests are same-day and done in a single visit.

Same-day wasp removal, and what to do until we get there

Wasp removal in Scarborough is a same-day service through the season, and a nest beside a door, wasps loose inside the house, or anyone with a sting allergy can be booked 24/7 as an emergency. The hours before the technician arrives are where most stings happen, so a few plain rules:

• Keep people and pets away from the flight path. Wasps defend a zone around the entrance, not only the nest itself. Bring the dog in and keep the kids off that side of the yard.
• Do not plug the hole. Stuffing a soffit gap or a crack in the brick traps a live colony in the wall, and the workers look for another way out, sometimes into the attic or a bedroom ceiling.
• Leave the lawn mower in the shed. On the deep back lots near the Bluffs and along the Rouge, ground nests sit in the grass, and mower vibration is the classic trigger for a swarm.
• Keep the windows on that wall shut when the nest is in a soffit or wall void, and note where the insects are coming and going. That saves time on the inspection.

Signs it is time to call

• Wasps streaming in and out of one hole in the ground, a wall, or the soffit.
• A grey football-shaped or closed ball-shaped nest anywhere near the house.
• A nest within reach of a door, a walkway, a patio, or a kid's play area.
• More than a handful of wasps indoors, which can mean a nest inside a wall, a soffit, or the attic.
• Anyone in the home with a known sting allergy and any active nest on the property.

Common questions

Reviewed October 2026.

For a nest that cannot wait, or anything with an allergy in the home, see emergency pest control. For a business or rental building, that is commercial pest control. How every service is priced is on the cost page.

(289) 806-3934