I was surprised to see that the wasp nest was still abuzz. A nest still this active in mid-October is not unprecedented, but I regard it as highly unusual.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday just past were fabulous, and as the sun burned down it was a thrill to see so many insects still about. A very late speckled wood butterfly was fluttering about the allotment, along with a last few large whites. A huge queen buff-tailed bumblebee, was examining the compost heap; I guess she was searching out a suitable hibernation site. Every now and then something else would buzz past: rosemary leaf beetles, green shieldbugs and ladybirds were all very active.
I was also surprised to see that the wasp nest, two plots down, was still abuzz. At the end of the season, wasp colonies normally rather fizzle out. There is usually a little bit of activity from the last remaining workers as the new queens and males are emerging to mate, but this was still foraging activity at full throttle. There was the same constant commuting I'd seen back in July. In some years I've found queens already gone into 'winter' hiding by the end of August.
A nest still this active in mid-October is not unprecedented, but I regard it as highly unusual. It'll be interesting to see how big the nest is when it finally comes to a close. I'll ask if I can dig it up and examine the combs. I've only done this once before, when we moved into a half-derelict house and discovered an old nest the size of a beach ball up in the loft. There were too many individual cells to count, but an estimate of so-many cells per square inch allowed me to estimate that the seven or eight paper combs had once been home to over 9000 wasps.
Once the new sexual generation of males and queens have emerged, all the other wasps die off and the nest will never be used again; so it is always safe to remove an old one and dissect it. Unless, of course, you happen to live in New Zealand, where the European wasps, accidentally transported to the southern hemisphere many years ago, are confused by the lack of clear seasons. Instead of stopping for winter, they continue colony-building for two, three or perhaps even more years, creating huge nests the size of saloon cars with scores of thousands of workers. Let's hope global warming doesn't encourage them to act like that here.
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