The Wasp's Nest

I had spent some time in the greenhouse, sowing the runner bean seeds and then planting three hanging baskets.   Whilst hanging the last of these from the roof, I noticed a neat grey hens egg sized object.    After a moments reflection I realised that it was a hornet or wasp's nest, and this was confirmed a few moments later when a large yellow and black insect flew in and entered the nest.    Thereafter  I was more careful to keep away from it, and when the planting was finished took a few photographs.    I sent an E-mail to Stuart Bennett from his most informative Web Site and received an interesting reply.   

 Yes I can confirm that you have a wasp nest. As regards sitting back and watching it develop, this would be very nice but it would very soon get to a stage where you would not be able to go anywhere near your greenhouse. At the moment you are watching the queen rearing the first of the workers (usually about 12) in the nest, as soon as these workers emerge things move on apace, the queen then stays in the nest and lays eggs and the workers do all the fetching and carrying  and looking after the eggs and larvae. A nest at full maturity will have up to 25,000 wasps in it; it all depends on the availability of food and weather conditions. In the construction of a wasps nest there will be a banding effect, different colours of paper, each colour indicates a different wasp has created that particular layer. In the young nest you have there will be no banding as all the work has been done by the queen.

At the end of the year the young queens will leave the nest and hibernate and the rest of the nest will die. They do not use the same nest again, but always build a new one. Destruction of the nest is most easily done at the stage it is now at, the bigger it gets the more difficult it becomes. At the present size you could knock, or cut the nest off into a plastic bag and then burn it, if you want to keep the nest get hold of some crawling insect powder and puff it into the opening of the nest....BUT BE CAREFUL....leave the nest for a few days just to make sure that the powder has worked. The powders the public can buy are not as strong as the powders used in pest control.

Before dealing with the nest I took a few more photographs, and once when the nest was disturbed out came the queen ready to attack, whereupon I retreated to a safe distance, from where I watched her inspecting the camera and tripod very closely indeed.     Once settled however she mostly flew past me straight to the nest, because I was not directly in the flight path.    After watching the nest for a few days and making sure that all was safe, the nest was varnished and then sectioned revealing the brood cells seen in the picture above.

        I am indebted to Stuart Bennett for his advice and information on insects and pests.     He stresses that extreme care should always be taken when dealing with them because of the danger of Anaphylactic Shock, which can be fatal, and that a mature nest is best dealt with by a professional. 

For a full description of all matters relating to anything referred to in this report please visit his web site on http://www.the-piedpiper.co.uk/  .

Michael Ryder, 24th. May 2001.

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