The most reliable repellent that I have found is burnt hair/fur, the smell of which most animals and insects will go out of their way to avoid. Burnt hair specifically smells of burnt protein, which is a concrete warning to creatures that one or more of them was consumed by fire. They instinctively avoid this smell, unless they have absolutely no other choice.
I had a family of rats move into my garage attic, so I put some hair clippings in an aluminum pie pan, placed it in the attic, and with the proper safety precautions, as hair burns quite quickly, lit the hair on fire. Within minutes I could hear the rats scrabbling, and by that evening they had moved out. I left the pan with its ashes in place, and never had animals try to nest there again.
This works similarly with wasps. If you knock their nest down, they will just rebuild. But if you light their nest on fire, and leave the charred stump. They will move to an entirely separate structure, to avoid such apocalypses.