Wasp nest removal in Manchester costs £60. That is the whole number — not a starting price, not £60 plus VAT, not £60 plus a call-out. A bumblebee nest is £70. Hornets are wasps as far as the treatment is concerned, so a hornet nest is £60 as well.
What follows is where that sits next to the two other sets of numbers you will find when you search: the national price guides, and the published charges of the councils around Greater Manchester. Every figure below is linked to its source and stamped with the month we checked it.
The short version
- Wasp nest — £60 fixed. Covers the visit, the treatment, and a free return if the colony survives.
- Hornet nest — £60 fixed. Hornets are a large wasp. Same product, same method, same price.
- Bumblebee nest — £70 fixed. Slower, more careful work, and most of them never need doing at all.
- No VAT on top, no call-out, no evening or weekend premium.
Tier one: what the national price guides say
These are the pages that rank first for cost queries. They are written to cover the whole of the UK and, in most cases, the whole of pest control, so they average a Salford soffit in with a Kensington roof terrace and a bed bug heat treatment. The figures, checked July 2026:
- Checkatrade — £75 to £200 for one nest, with a stated average of £137.50. Pest control cost guide.
- Airtasker UK — £71 to £241, median £156, and a specific Manchester figure of £186. Wasp nest removal cost.
- Fantastic Services — £50 to £100. The only national guide we found that lands anywhere near the real local rate. Wasp nest removal price guide.
Airtasker's Manchester-specific number, £186, is just over three times what we charge. Checkatrade's average of £137.50 is more than twice. Neither site is being dishonest — they are aggregating quotes from general pest control firms nationwide, many of whom price a wasp nest as one line on a broader job sheet. But if you take those figures as the going rate in Greater Manchester, you will badly overpay.
Tier two: what Greater Manchester councils charge
Councils publish their charges openly, which makes them the most useful benchmark available. All figures below come from each council's own charges page and were checked in July 2026. Third-party sites quote several conflicting figures for Manchester in particular, so the number that matters is the one on the council's own page on the day you book.
- Manchester City Council — £84 per wasp nest. The published charges state that they include VAT. Treatment charges.
- Trafford — £63 below gutter level, £84 above it, plus £37 for a second or subsequent nest treated at the same time. A £51.50 call-out fee is built into every treatment charge, and charged again if you miss the appointment. Pest control charges.
- Stockport — £116 including VAT, which covers one revisit or nest removal within 28 days; extra nests are £10 each. A 50 per cent discount applies on production of qualifying benefits. Household pest control prices.
- Bolton — £74.50, rising to £89 for a nest above gutter height, with an additional nest on the same site at £28.50. Pests in your home or garden.
- Tameside — £54.17 plus VAT, so £65.00. Second and subsequent nests on the same site are treated at half rate, and a revisit to a nest that was not destroyed is free. Pest control charges.
- Salford — not published. The council's pests page confirms prices include VAT but shows the figure only inside its online booking system. Pests and infestations.
Two things the council price does not buy you
The nest stays where it is. Tameside states plainly that wasp nest treatments do not include removal of the nest. Stockport says its officer does not usually remove the nest, and will not normally take one down until around October. This is not a criticism — a treated nest is dead, harmless, and never reused, so leaving it is the correct answer. But if you are picturing someone carrying a nest away in a bag for your money, that is not what any of these prices are for.
There is a height ceiling. Manchester City Council's own booking terms say it can only treat a wasp nest a maximum of five metres from the ground, or the gutter height of a roof to a maximum of five metres, and that it no longer treats nests from ladders for health and safety reasons — the lance is operated from the ground. The same terms say that if the nest or its entry point cannot be located, a refund is not applicable. Worth reading before you pay in advance: pest control terms and conditions.
Council teams also work office hours. If the nest is over a back door and you have a toddler, the practical question is often not what it costs but which day next week they can come.
Tier three: what local specialists actually charge
The third set of numbers is the one nobody aggregates. Independent firms that do nothing but wasp, hornet and bumblebee nests across Greater Manchester publish fixed prices on their own sites, and those prices sit in a tight band — the ones visible in July 2026 run from roughly £55 to £65 for a single nest. Ours is £60.
The reason the band is so tight is that the job is genuinely standard. A nest treatment is one technician, one visit, twenty to forty-five minutes, and a small quantity of professional insecticide. There is not much room for a £186 version of that.
Exactly what is inside the £60
Included, with nothing to add afterwards:
- The visit itself. No call-out fee, separate or hidden.
- VAT. £60 is the finished figure, not a pre-VAT one.
- Finding the nest. You do not need to have located it. Pointing at where you keep seeing wasps is enough.
- The treatment. Professional insecticide applied at the nest or its entry point.
- Evenings and weekends. Same price, seven days.
- The return visit, if any of the colony survives.
Not included, stated plainly so there are no surprises:
- Taking the dead nest down. If it is accessible and you want it gone once activity has stopped, ask on the day and we will advise. It is not part of the standard job because it almost never needs to be.
- Proofing or building work. Sealing the gap a colony used is a separate trade, and best done after activity stops rather than during.
- Anything that is not a wasp, hornet or bumblebee nest. We do not do general pest control. If it turns out to be something else, we will tell you who does.
One pattern is worth naming because the category is full of it: a price written as from £X plus VAT. That is two escape hatches in five words. The word from means the number can move once someone is standing in your garden, and plus VAT means the figure you read was never the figure you pay. We do not quote that way, and you are entitled to ask anyone who does what the finished total is before they set off.
A second nest at the same address
The £60 covers the nest you called about. It is fairly common to find a second one on the same visit, usually at the opposite corner of the same roof. If that happens, we tell you what it costs before we treat it and you decide there and then. Nothing goes on the bill that you have not agreed to first.
For reference, the councils publish a fixed second-nest rate: Trafford £37, Bolton £28.50, Tameside half the first-nest rate, Stockport £10.
Height, access, and where £60 stops
The price does not change with height. A ground nest under decking in Withington and a soffit nest at the gutter line of a three-storey Victorian terrace in Whalley Range are the same £60. That is a real difference from the council model, which prices below and above gutter level separately.
The honest limit is reach, not money. Treatment is applied at the nest or its entry point, and there are places on a building where that cannot be done safely from the ground or from a normal working position — a nest halfway up a chimney stack, one on a fourth-floor elevation, or one only approachable across a neighbour's locked yard. If a job needs scaffolding, a cherry picker or a roof-access team, it is not a £60 job and it is not one we will pretend to take on. We will say so, ideally on the phone before anyone travels, and there is nothing to pay for finding out.
What if there is no nest, or it cannot be treated?
If we attend and there is genuinely nothing to treat, there is nothing to pay. Same if we get there and decide the nest cannot be reached safely. We would rather lose the visit than take £60 for a job we cannot finish properly.
This is the single clearest difference between the local tier and the council tier, and it is worth understanding before you pay anyone up front. Manchester City Council's terms state that no refund applies if the nest or entry point cannot be located, and that no refund is given where no evidence of pests is found or where the insect turns out to be one it does not treat. Stockport charges a £35 attendance and advice fee if the officer attends but cannot carry out a treatment. Trafford's £51.50 call-out is charged again if nobody is home.
What if it comes back?
If wasps are still active at the same nest after treatment, we return and re-treat it, free. That is part of the original fee, not an extra product, and there is no time limit game to play. In practice a nest is normally finished on the first visit — activity drops away within hours and stops completely inside a day or two.
What the guarantee is not is cover against a different nest. Wasp nests are single-use: the colony dies in autumn and is never reoccupied. A new nest that appears elsewhere on the property later in the season is a genuinely new colony and a separate job. Anyone promising you a season's immunity for one fee is selling you something they cannot deliver.
When you should not be paying anyone at all
Some of the calls we take should not end in a booking, and it is worth knowing which ones before you spend £60 or £84.
- An old, empty nest in the loft. If you found it in winter and it is papery, dry and silent, it is last year's and it is dead. Wasps never reuse one. Put it in a bin bag yourself. That is a free job.
- A bumblebee nest that is not in anyone's way. Bumblebee colonies are short-lived and die back naturally in autumn, leaving nothing behind. If the flight path does not cross a door, a path or where you sit, leaving it alone is the right answer and costs nothing.
- A honeybee swarm. A dense hanging cluster of thousands of small amber-brown bees is a honeybee swarm, and it is not something we treat. A local beekeeper may collect one. Councils will not touch them either — Stockport says outright that it does not treat bees and points people to a beekeeper, and Tameside charges its call-out even when it declines the job.
- One wasp in the kitchen in August. A single wasp through an open window is not a nest. Repeat sightings in the same room over several days, or a steady flight path to one point outside, is a different matter — our signs of a wasp nest guide covers how to tell.
If you are not sure which of those you have, ring and describe it. Working that out on the phone costs nothing and takes about a minute, and if the answer is that you do not need us, that is what you will be told.
Want the number confirmed for your address?
£60 fixed fee, same-day across Manchester and Greater Manchester. Call 07770 015197, describe what you are seeing, and you will get the finished price and an arrival window on the same call.
Call to BookFrequently Asked Questions
Published prices vary far more than the job does. National price guides quote £75 to £200 per nest, Greater Manchester councils publish between £63 and £116, and independent wasp specialists in the region advertise roughly £55 to £65. In Manchester we charge £60, fixed, with nothing added on top.
Most Greater Manchester councils will treat a wasp nest, but they do not usually take the nest away and they cost more than a local specialist. Manchester City Council charges £84 per nest, Stockport £116, Bolton £74.50, Trafford £63 below gutter level, and Tameside £65. Council teams generally work weekdays only and take payment before the visit.
No. £60 is the total you pay. There is no VAT line added afterwards, no call-out fee, no fuel surcharge, and no evening or weekend premium. If a quote is written as from £60 plus VAT, that is a different and larger number, and it is worth asking what the finished figure actually is before anyone travels.
No. There is no call-out charge, so if we attend and there is nothing there to treat, there is nothing to pay. That is not how every provider works: Manchester City Council's terms say a refund is not applicable if the nest or entry point cannot be located, Stockport charges a £35 attendance fee, and Trafford charges a £51.50 call-out.
The £60 covers the nest you called us about. If we find a second active nest at the same address while we are there, we will tell you what it costs before we treat it, and you decide. Nothing is added to your bill that you have not agreed to first. For comparison, councils publish a set second-nest rate: Trafford £37, Bolton £28.50, Stockport £10.
No. £60 is the same whether the nest is in a ground-level flowerbed or at the gutter line of a three-storey terrace. Several councils price by height instead — Bolton charges £74.50 below gutter height and £89 above it, Trafford £63 and £84. The honest limit for us is reach, not price: a nest that needs scaffolding or a cherry picker is not a job we take on, and we will say so.
If wasps are still active at the treated nest afterwards, we come back and re-treat it free of charge. That is included in the original fee and there is no second visit charge. Wasps do not reuse an old nest, so a new nest in a new spot later in the season is a separate job.
A bumblebee nest is £70 fixed. Most of them do not need treating at all — a bumblebee colony dies back naturally in autumn and the nest is never reused. If it is not crossing a doorway, a path, or a seating area, the right advice is usually to leave it alone, and we will tell you that on the phone rather than sell you a visit.