How many stings need a doctor?

healthdirect says to see a doctor straight away if a child has 5 or more stings or an adult has 10 or more. For one or two, wash with soap and water and use a wrapped ice pack for 15 minutes.

Do you handle bee removal in Orange?

Bees inside a wall or roof are a job a pest business can quote. A swarm resting in a tree is usually collected by a local beekeeper. Our bees page explains the difference.

Pest control Orange: European wasps, bees and mosquitoes

Stung, or near a nest?

Keep people and pets away from the nest and don't dig, block or pour anything into the hole. Call 000 if someone stung has noisy breathing, a swollen tongue or throat, a wheeze, a change in voice, dizziness or collapses. If they carry an adrenaline autoinjector, healthdirect says to use it straight away, then call 000.

What's different in Orange

European wasps live here

The Australian Museum names Orange, Bathurst and Forbes among the places European wasps are found. The museum says they were known in NSW by 1978.

How NSW Health maps mosquitoes

NSW Health splits the state's mosquito-borne virus activity into three zones: inland, the tablelands, and the coastal strip. As at 30 July 2026, it lists Orange as a Japanese encephalitis high risk area, a health listing for NSW Health and your GP rather than a pest job.

Summer surveillance

NSW Health watches mosquitoes and the viruses they carry every year from November to April, the peak months for both.

Is it a European wasp?

The Australian Museum describes a stout wasp, 1.2 to 1.6 cm long, with a bright yellow and black banded body and black spots on each yellow band. Victoria's health department adds two clues you can see from a distance: European wasps have all black antennae and fly fast with their legs tucked in, while paper wasps are slimmer, have orange-brown antennae and let their back legs dangle.

A nest made of mud isn't a European wasp nest. Theirs are papery, made from chewed wood pulp, and about 80% of them are in the ground, with most of the rest inside roofs and wall cavities. What you usually see is a steady line of wasps going in and out of one hole.

Why the nest might not be in your yard

European wasps forage up to half a kilometre from the nest, so the ones at your barbecue may live next door or across the road. They're drawn to meat, sweet food and drink.

A colony starts in spring with one queen and grows all summer; new queens and males hatch in autumn. The museum says Australia's warmer climate can keep a nest going over several seasons, past 100,000 wasps, so a hole that looks quiet in October can be busy by March.

Bees or wasps?

	Bees	European wasps
Body	Rounder and usually hairy	Slender and smooth, bright yellow and black
Sting	Leaves the sting in the skin	Can sting more than once
Usual nest	A swarm on a branch, or a hive in a cavity	A hole in the ground, a roof or a wall
Who to call	A beekeeper for a swarm; a pest business for bees in the house	A pest business

Where we'd start with pests in Orange

Watch from well back to find where the wasps are going in, take a photo, and tap A wasp nest. Leave the hose and the fly spray alone: a disturbed nest defends itself, and European wasps attack when that happens.

Want someone to look at it?

Tell us what you've seen and your postcode, and a local pest business that handles exactly that calls you to talk it through.

What have you seen?