It's so easy to disturb hibernating insects during winter tidying. The thing to remember is not to rouse them before their time, or they'll surely perish.
The loose bark on old logs is one of the most important hibernating sites for all manner of insects. Here they can remain sheltered from predators, and also from their main enemies during winter: frost and damp. This week they will be sorely tested by the snow.
I regularly find queen wasps curled up, with their wings folded and tucked down underneath their bodies. With metabolism turned down to barely tick-over, they are immobile and can be closely examined (but not picked up) without risk of startling them into defensive action.
Wasps are handsome creatures, and well worthy of respectful study. These ones (pictured, above) were beautifully snug and dry under the bark of a large oak log in Beckenham Place Park.
I recently found this group of related insects (left). They are ichneumons, parasitoid wasps which lay their eggs inside living caterpillars. The hatching grubs then eat the caterpillars alive from the inside. These specimins had chosen a much damper situation under the bark of a pine log.
It's so easy to disturb hibernating insects during winter tidying. The thing to remember is not to rouse them before their time, or they'll surely perish. If they cannot be replaced back in the same place, move them to a similar sheltered, but cool spot elsewhere in the garden. Even raise a new wood stack around them. Anything found indoors, disturbed by the central heating, can be let go into an unheated shed or outhouse where they will settle back down again until temperature and day length switch on the right internal trigger in their body clocks in spring.
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