Aside from keeping your food inside, sealing up your house and trashcans, avoiding sweet smells and bright colors, you should try these six tricks to deter the pesky and sometimes aggressive wasps around you and your house.

1. Water and Pennies: Many agree, while they don’t know why, that putting water and some pennies in a clear Ziploc bag and hanging it over your door frame flies, wasps and other flying insects will stay away. Although if, how well, and why it works is still in question, it seems to be doing the trick for many people with severe flying insect problems.
2. Peppermint Oil: Bugs are not a fan of peppermint oil, especially spiders and wasps. Put some oil and dilute it with water into a spray bottle to spray on yourself and around your house to help deter unwanted bugs.
3. Hang a Fake Nest: While you can buy a fake wasp nest in the store, it is much easier and cheaper to make one at home out of a brown paper bag. Hang the bag slightly wrinkled and crumpled upside down outside in a tree or near your home where a wasp nest might normally be. The fake nest is said to deter wasps from either building their own nest, or encourage an already established nest to move somewhere else avoiding conflict. This would be a great trick to do early in the season next spring to help combat the wasp problem before it really gets started.
4. Make a Trap: There are many types of aesthetically pleasing or guaranteed to work wasp traps you can buy in the store, but again there is a version that can be made at home using common household supplies. Use a large empty soda or water bottle. Cut off the top section, turning it upside down to rest with the mouthpiece inside of the bottle. Tape the two pieces together. Next, cover the mouthpiece in jam and fill the bottom of the water bottle with soapy water. This trap will draw the wasps into the narrow hole with the sweet jam. Once inside, the wasps will have trouble getting out. After some time, they will fall into the water and drown. These traps are small and easy to make so they can be placed all over the outside of your home and yard.
5. Spray them away: Instead of dousing one self in bug repellent everyday, try dousing the bugs themselves! Using common household goods like dish soapy water, hairspray and cooking oil you can spray the wasp until it is dead or slowed down enough to squash it. Spraying a wasp with just water will only aggravate it so avoid that method.
6. Destroy Nests Carefully: If dealing with a live wasp nest just isn’t your idea of a good time, wait until the first freeze of the winter when the temperatures kill off the wasps and their nests become easy to remove and destroy. If you must deal with your wasp nest right now, check out this article: Natural Wasp Control for some nest removal tips.