I kill ants in the house with boric acid. I mix my own, but you can buy it premixed. If you know what you are doing (ant leave trails, use them), it's very effective and doesn't leave any residual poisons like other methods. I've heard borax works just as well. The concentration used in pools is about one thousandth of what I use to kill ants (1 tbsp per cup sugar water).
I had lots of wasps drinking from my pool for a year or two. Mostly paper wasps and mud dabbers, but not yellow jackets which look more like bees. During the winter months they are slow and sometimes fail to escape and end up in the skimmer. I've been stung once and surprised many times. Then I added 15 ppm borax (and the required acid to balance). Now I rarely see them. The change was drastic and sudden, so in my experience, borax works very well for wasps even at lower than recommended levels.
I hope it doesn't kill them. As said above wasps are beneficial and since I grew up with honey bees, I'm not to worried by them.