Summer is a perfect time to sit in the shade and enjoy a tall, cold glass of sun-brewed tea.

It also is peak time for angry wasps. The mild winter and abundance of other insects seems to have resulted in an unusually high population of both paper and the mud dauber type of wasps this year.

If you find these menacing insects buzzing around your home, here are some ideas that might keep you “sting-free” this summer.

Wasps, for the most part, are beneficial to people. They attack and parasitize many kinds of harmful insects including flies, caterpillars and spiders. Only the female wasp can sting as the stinging mechanism mainly is a modified egg-laying structure. Wasps have stingers without barbs, which means they can sting repeatedly. Female wasps use their stinger for two reasons — to parasitize food for the eggs she is laying and for defense.

There are two types of wasps — social and solitary. The Polistes (or paper) wasp is probably the most well-known social wasp. They are long-legged and slender with a spindle-shaped abdomen. They are reddish-brown to brown in color. They build paper nests that look like a one-layered section of honeycomb facing downward. They use attics, barns and garages as nesting locations. Often the nests are under the eaves or protective overhang of a building. Only the mated females survive the winters. So, killing a Polistes female in the spring will eliminate an entire nest during the summer.

Another well-known wasp being encountered this year is the solitary mud dauber. These wasps emerged from their nests in the spring and begin mating. The female daubers then build mud or clay nests that consist of six to 20 cells. Each cell contains as many as 20 parasitized spiders and a single egg. The eggs hatch and feed on the spiders. They pupate into an adult and emerge in about two weeks. There are between one and three generations of mud daubers per year.

Wasp control is not hard but can be dangerous. Always wear protective clothing such as long sleeves and good “running” shoes. Try to make your treatment applications at night when the insects are inside or on the nest. If you need light to see, use a flashlight covered with red cellophane as they can not see the red light very well. And treat the nest only with products labeled for use on bees and wasps.

To control the Polistes wasp, inspect under eaves and other desirable nesting areas. Remove and destroy the nest after completely spraying it with a bee and wasp type insecticide. Mud daubers are a bit more difficult to control. The best solution is to exclude or prevent them from constructing the nest in the first place.