What IS this Smell??????

[PinkChick]

we had a wasps nest inside air brick couple oif weeks ago...£70+ to sort out so we had a go ourselves buying the recomended wasp nest killing spray chemicals..after 2 cans and several applications they are now gone.

i swept wasp corpses away that were on floor under air brick, lots of them, they were all hard and crunchy(relevent in a min).

But now, sat in my front room, close to the inside of the area where the air brick/wasp nest was we can smell what i can only describe as rotting fish!

Its not over powering but vile when you sit near window, with the dead ones outside being all hard and crunchy i thought any inside would be too?, we had LOADS on floor all dead, but am guessing there may have been mabny more inside??..what do i do to get rid of the smell?..without removing my wall

hmm maybe its the chemicals still smelling?? and it will go eventually

or maybe the millions few wasps left stink a bit but will rot completely away soon as they are small and it will stop??

sorry I have no experience of this at all
so no help at all

BUMP

we had a rotting fish smell in our house, it was caused by an old light fitting that was rotting, the smell was disgusting. Check your lamps!

thanks

its not the light fitting but we did have that in a previous house its awful isnt it!, it was the ring you attatch the lightshades too!..we thought we had dead rodents under the floor boards!

i dont think its the chemical smell..it smelt quite nice like furniture polish, but maybe its a combo of dead wasp and polish ...am hoping it does 'just go'..dont know if to spray more chemical inside in hope it masks smell/neutralizes it???..when we were using it you could smell it inside house as well where air brick meets wall inside, but it was pleasant..however we could also hear LOTS of wasps buzzing in the wall when we'd done it, which was quite scary! LOL

eeewwwwww
wasps are awful
Hope it fades soon!

This is very interesting. Two weeks ago I had a wasps nest treated with chemicals. The nest was above the front door. I discovered the problem because I had lots of wasps in the front upstairs bedroom.

I was very pleased that the chemicals seemed to have worked and no more wasps.

This week I have a bad dead fish smell in the front bedroom.

I suspected it was because the wasp nest must have been under the floor boards there somewhere but thought perhaps I was being a bit mad.

Now I have read your post I don't think I'm mad because you have the same problem. Unfortunately I don't have a solution but some solidarity.

hiya, had a wasps nest recently in my wall too. two weeks afterwards i have this distgusting dead fish smell, is it the wasps? did u sort your problem and if so how??
the smell is revolting and i'ts right next to my bed where the wall is where the wasps nest was/is.

I'm grateful to read the above postings! Had a wasps nest 'dealt with' by Pest Control last week. It was under a floor and wasps were coming in through an air brick from outside.
Oh boy, a few days later and still right now, the room which had the now-deceased nest under it STINKS and I would agree that the smell is like bad rotten fish! Doors and windows are open right now, which reduces the smell, but surely there is someone out there who a) knows about this problem, and more importantly, b) will it continue or gradually disappear?? I can only spend time in the room mentioned, with door and all windows open. (Not possible in winter!)
Can anyone add some helpful info to us 'rotten fish sufferers' on this forum please? Also does the rotten fish smell contain any of the chemical used to kill the wasps?
I live in the country and like all animals and insects, but as a proverbial silver surfer am having a touch of 'waspophobia', not due to the fact that they sting, but 'cos they STINK when eradicated 'en masse' it would seem....
Regards to all.

Perhaps the wasp larvae decompose with the (organic) nest? I guess this will eventually stop as it all dries out. My sympathies.

Good thinking, I hadn't taken rotting wasp larvae into account. Could cause the smell? Lets hope in a few weeks it will all have dried out and the smell has vanished. I'm an optimist, so here's hoping....

Just can confirm the rotting fish smell - which was really bad!! defintely was the wasps nest, as now, a fortnight or more later, having had the windows open every day, thankfully it has just about gone! Presumably dried out and now crumbling........so if you get the strong 'rotting fish' smell, and especially if you live in an older house where the floorboards may have a small gap in them.....YES is is rotting wasps nest/larvae/wasps -and thankfully if you are patient, YES it should go away after time, of it's own accord,when it all dries out. Mine has.
Thanks to this forum for helping me.
Cheers to all,
NoWaspsPlease

We had a professional to come and spray a wasp nest outside my son's dormer window. It was sprayed about 6 weeks ago and we have noticed the same smell as all of you. He described it as cat litter but fish smell would also suffice. We hope it goes away soon. Air freshener until the smell goes away.

I know this is an old thread, but it has been very useful to me. I have had a dreadful smell in my living room for 8 months. I at first thought it was cats peeing outside my bay window and the smell coming through the air vents. We spent a fortune on trying to alleviate the smell, carpets cleaned, cat scarers, sprays, the garden dug up etc etc. After reading this thread, I decided to go underground, i.e. getting a friend to lift some of the floor boards and hurrah ! there was the answer..two wasp nest one large decaying one and a new one forming. I called Rentokil in and the operative confirmed wasp nests do SMELL. Problem solved after months of worry. So a very BIG THANK YOU to Mumsnet .

Hi, I know this is an old thread but oh god the smell of rotten wasps nests is a real thing, mine still smells in wafts months later, please tell me it goes eventually? Very old house - it's just awful, wish they'd warn you!

Another one resurrecting this thread! Wasps getting in through a gap in our bricks - made a nest in the wall cavity as no sign of anything anywhere inside the house.
Had it treated a few weeks ago and then a week or 2 later I noticed an awful smell in my daughter’s bedroom. Thought she’d wet the bed - badly - but nothing at all. It was a nasty strong urine smell. Much googling convinced me it was the radiators corroding so we turned them off completely and froze for a few days as we were going on holiday and no time to sort before we went.
We returned at the weekend and bled the radiators today and they’re all fine - no corrosion! I the suddenly had the thought that the smell was coming from the general vicinity of where the wasps were coming in and maybe having the heating on had triggered the smell of the chemicals (or rotting wasps, as I’ve now read ) to waft out!
It’s been left for over a week and we’ll sited before we went away and once just turned the heating on - no trace of a smell. Fingers crossed!

Really helpful reading everyone's experience after having their nests exterminted. I've been finding wasps in my bedroom every day for the past week or so. I suspect a nest in the loft, but after reading about the awful smell caused by the dead wasps I now plan to leave well alone. I don't go into the loft and since it's now halfway through September I think I can cope with things as they are until they all clear off an abandon the nest for the winter. Then I'll stick my head through the hatch and investigate and pop a fake nest (paper bag) up there so that if they return in the spring they'll think someone beat them to it and will go elsewhere (apparently this is a thing and it works). So hopefully I'll save myself £70, an irate pest controller who wouldn't like my tiny loft hatch, and weeks of dead fish stink. Sound like a plan?

One of the replies says they got the smell before having the nest treated though, and that is was only after the smell that they discovered the rotting nest.

Early August 2022 and my olfaction catches the smell that we all know and is the cause of our visit in this thread. Greetings to all. The smell is coming from the window in my sister's old room that now accommodates my bicycles .Never gave much of attention when Sunday night 18/09/22 i was messing with my bike and a strong kick of that smell hit me. I stuck my nose outside the window thinking was the garbage at the corner of the road, nothing. Fully opened the window with anger, slamming it open, not knowing where that awful smell was coming from and turned away. Suddenly i hear the buzzing of an insect, turn towards the window and i see 4 European wasps hovering inside the house beside window. I sprayed the room with the classic killer insect spray ,closed the door and waited for the menacing sound of the insects hitting to walls because they were poisoned to stop. When there was no noise went back inside and saw 4 wasps on ground twitching.Gathered them and threw them outside the window. While i was trying to gather them i noticed a noise like the the raindrops do when they meet the window glass. Looked outside no rain. Took my flash light and started to aiming through the crack that the window roles inside the wall. That was the moment that i felt like Hicks from aliens when he slowly aimed his rifle flashlight over the ceiling and saw the alien horde coming toward him. There was a wasps nest , the size of rugby ball with the wasps swarming all over the place. The chemical that i had sprayed to kill the first 4 ,must have also traveled through the crack and made the whole swarm to go hey wire. I then emptied the whole can of spray through the crack,closed the window and waited. While waiting the noise from they crazy wasps hitting the walls trying to escape was insane. After half an hour or so when everything was calm , i opened the window and saw the carnage. Half dead bodies everywhere but the most astonishing image was the fact that between the twitching almost dead wasps were also larva 1 meter away from nest ,meaning in there straggle for survival , some wasps tried to rescue their little ones. Anyway after that, i destroyed the nest, threw away all of the dead bodies i could reach , many of them are stuck inside the window crack and the smell is strongly present. I will update as soon as the state of the odor has changed. Hopefully everything will dry out soon.The images are after the cleaning.

🤮🐝

Get a double glazing installer to remove and replace the window if you can't reach them.

Update. After 22 days and spray once a day chlorine(bleach) in the window opening i can say the smell starts to retreat . The most intense odor came when i sucked all of the dead bodies and larva and destroyed nest remainings with the vacuum(after removing the shutter as Thistleinthenight suggested ). It was like burned rotten fish? Really messed up. Until this day , almost every morning we see a few European hornets circling the house searching for their nest.