Check your sheds this weekend!

And garages, outhouses, lofts, etc. So easily sorted out when there's only the queen to deal with but later in the year could be a real problem.

Discovered this one lurking in a kiddies' wendy house.

The intial nest being made by the queen. It's about the size of a golf ball



View from underneath showing the chambers with developing lavae.



Tell-tale debris on the floor



The queen, chewing wood to make paper pulp to extend the nest



Later, when the young adult wasps emerge the queen will only lay eggs and control her colony. The workers take on all the other duties of nest building, collecting food, defence and tending young. By Autumn there can be over 2000 wasps and it's something you definitely don't want to tackle in a confined space. :D

[ 09. June 2006, 11:52 PM: Message edited by: frogesque ]

 

We found one of these in our shed on our allotment last weekend.At first we thought that it was one the queen used for overwintering,but when she kept coming back to it while I was working in the shed, decided it had to go.

I took a couple of pictures of it with my digital camera, before it was knocked down.

It is a shame because it is a thing of beauty in a way, but I dion't fancy getting stung by 2,000 wasps

Kandy

 

The noise of a wasp removing wood for nest building is almost as nerve jangling as someone scratching their nails down a blackboard.

 

Mums and dads beware, my son has a TP climbing frame and the tent window part rolls up, I went to roll it down after about 5 days and there was a honeycomb in it about the size of a large bar chocolate, luckily there were no stingers that i noticed about when i found it, but i dread to think about it being any bigger and toddlers playing so close, so maybe make sure you dont keep them rolled up all the time. So thanks for the reminder frogesque will check the sheds later when they arent so hot.