Nature Friday - Vespula

Digging and cutting yesterday to clear a space for Number Three Olive Tree I rolled out a biggish rock and disturbed a wasp nest.

Looks a bit like an overcooked meringue

Quick retreat.

Even though it is only about the size of a large orange that probably represents more than enough wasps to be really painful.

Sneaking back later to admire the colours and construction I snapped a couple of photos.

Exposed as they are, I am hoping the wasps will elect to vacate and go somewhere better protected.  As long as it's not under the next rock I'm planning to move I don't really care where they choose. 

A local residents' association has been putting out wasp traps/poison as wasps apparently reach serious pest proportions in summer.  They are not a native species and there seems to be good reasons - apart from pestilence - for reducing their concentrations.  (I guess whatever those reasons are they all pretty much boil down to pestilence.)

I have one positive wasp tale: a few years ago when I had my first allotment I decided to keep white butterfies off my brassicas with some super fine net. It sort of worked but it only needed one to find a way in and a week later my entire crop had been stripped to the stalks.  I tore off the special net, hacked off all the bared stalks and prepared to bury them right there - crawling as they were with fat green caterpillars. Suddenly I was inundated with wasps, attacking and feeding on the caterpillars, and I realized in an instant that the wasps too had been excluded by the mesh and prevented thereby from controlling the numbers of caterpillars; which was why when the white butterfly did strike, the caterpillars were able to be so devastating in only one week.

Lesson: a few wasps can be a good thing.

NB:  (from Department of Conservation website) "New Zealand has some of the highest densities of German and common wasps in the world. This is because they have no natural predators here, our winters are mild and there is plenty of food for them."

Maybe we have more than enough🤔