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've decided I am going to build one, but only along very particular lines.Many species of solitary bees and wasps nest in tunnels bored into wood. They often use old beetle burrows, rather than digging their own. And of course leaf-cutter bees will nest in any

and empty shell, hollowed out by the minute parasitoid 'wasp', Praon. The wasp eats the tender insides of the aphid, leaving a dry, mummified skin (left). It then burrows out through the underside and spins a disk-shaped cocoon underneath its victim

bees, bluebottles and hoverflies, but the overwhelming majority of visitors are wasps. Both of the common species are here, Vespula vulgaris and V. germanica and most of them are males. It takes me a couple of minutes to work this out; it’s something

the broken knopper galls lying on the pavement. A knoppergall is a strange wrinkled and knobbly growth that distorts the acorn into a large sticky folded mass. It is caused by a minute midge-like creature, the gall wasp Andricus quercuscalicis. As it lays

nestling in the overlapping planks.These are the puparia of hoverflies, probably Epistrophe elegans, a distinctive little pale orange and brown wasp mimic, often the first species to appear on the wing in March and April. Resembling smooth translucent

and saw what was clearly a very distinctive spider that I knew I would not have much difficultly finding in an ID guide. I picked it up to have a look under the lens. Ouch. It's not at all human-lethal, but it was as sudden and painful as a wasp sting

in Britain. Although there are about 250 species of hoverfly in the UK, and roughly 100 of them are black and yellow wasp mimics, this one is immediately recognizable by its narrow parallel-sided body shape and the fact that some abdominal segments have two

not to worry. Unlike honeybees and wasps, bumblebees are very docile and not prone to attack even if you stand right in front of the nest entrance. Having said that, four-year-old picked up what he thought was a dead one on the path nearby and it promptly stung

the leaves are dwarfed. However, the marble galls, the smooth round growths caused by tiny gall 'wasps' Andricus kollari, are exactly the same size as usual, no matter that the trees are only one metre rather than 30 metres high. Against the backdrop

, then this is the creature. But, sadly, it is just 'one of the ichneumons', which is quite frankly pathetic. Ichneumons are large and striking insects, allied to bees, wasps and ants. (Ichneumon is also another name for the Egyptian mongoose but we don't get those in East