I gave a wasp colony there home back. I printed little
anchors, stuck them to the back of the unpopulated wasp nest, and hung it back
where it used to sit. The wasps have since moved back in.
I have never liked wasps and flying insects in general.
Seeing a wasp causes a strong instant fear reaction. On several occasions I
have ‘ducked’ to the ground when they appears unexpectedly. The wasps didn’t
seem aggressive so when they appeared a few years ago I decided to leave
them there as a way to desensitise. There nest grew quite a large over the
years with dozens of wasps.
Occasionally a wasp will rest on washing hung out to dry,
but the biggest conflict occurs when using the BBQ. The smoke disturbs the
wasps and they all start to fly around. This hasn’t really been much of a
problem until I had guests over and people got quite uncomfortable.
I didn’t intend to kill the wasps, just get them to relocate
somewhere else. I evicted the wasps by burning mosquito coils nearby. When I
was confident all the wasps had left I tried to cut the nest down. The nest was
hung by a stem between the top of the nest and the ceiling of the patio. The stem
was surprisingly strong. In the end it was the nest its self that broke away
leaving the joining stem intact. To
prevent the wasps rebuilding I sprayed the ceiling with cooking oil which
stopped them walking over the oily surface.
Over the next few days the wasps returned to the wall
adjacent to their nest, and then started moving into the clothesline box nearby.
Eventually it became clear they wouldn’t go away without actually killing them.
I felt guilty about removing the nest and it was a worse situation to have them
in the clothesline box so I restored the nest as best I could.
Front of the nest, sorry about picture quality - I can't find the charger for my real camera.
Back of the nest, if you use your imagine you can kind of make out some wasps just left of centre.
