Eureka, I think we might have found it!

Tonight when I got home from dinner, the babysitter told me there was another wasp inside (which makes a total of 26 dead to date). We were searching the living room for where they were getting in. We looked high and low until she screamed and said "There's one coming in there!" It was coming in from the bottom of the fireplace. I quickly sprayed it. Then I got the flashlight out and we looked through the glass and saw a couple dead ones on the bottom of the fireplace. Then we looked at the bottom of the insert and there were at least 20 dead and alive wasps behind some of the metal. I took that spray can and covered the inside of the fireplace and the inside of the bottom of the insert and the top of the insert to try to kill whatever was in there. (By the way, Bill, we might have to disclose all that if we sell the house. :) Then we started seeing some more movement. There were a couple huge red wasps in there that started buzzing around. I quickly opened the glass and sprayed some more in there directly at the wasps. They fought the good fight, but lost. Then I had to figure out what I was going to do to ensure no more came into the house. All we could think of was duct tape. I'm sure I picked the most expensive roll out there, because it is a shiny duct tape, but that's what I got. We proceeded to cover every hole in that fireplace insert. Hopefully nothing is coming out of it. I'm going to call the pest people on Monday (might even try tomorrow) to see if they will come take care of it. I don't know where the nest is. It's got to be higher up I guess. Then, I'm going to call a chimney place and get them to close up the chimney so this doesn't happen again. Don't worry Bill, I won't make it a permanent closure. I think this might help our ladybug problem as well. Who knows!