I was tending to my plants when it happened, and it took me a moment to process what it was. A flurry of insects was circling my head and arms from a disturbed wasps’ nest.
Swabs of vinegar helped neutralise its alkalinity, but my cheek quickly swelled. There are a lot of wasps about this year.
The entrance to one is in a stone wall, another under the bargeboard of a shed. One was found when thistle-bashing in the field, a fourth when clipping a box hedge. A colony lives beneath our stone-flagged roof. There’s a resonating noise, audible in an upstairs room, as the wasps use their wings to fan air around the nest, regulating its temperature.
Built by the common wasp, these nests are hidden, tucked away in crevices or filling the chambers of abandoned mouse holes.
A wasp nest resembles a papier mache patchwork of colours from different types of wood. During its construction, the insects can be seen rasping at wooden surfaces with their mandibles, antennae bobbing as they scritch-scratch while walking backwards.
The pulped wood is mixed with saliva and used to make an enclosed honeycomb structure where the queen will lay her eggs. The emerging larvae are fed insects by female worker wasps. Their prey includes aphids and caterpillars, making wasps helpful to gardeners.
In return the larvae secrete a sugary liquid for the adults. By autumn, with no larvae left to feed, the workers look for a new food source, perhaps fermenting fruit. That’s when I will have to take care not to get stung again.