In the Spring you may hear them chewing at dry hogweed stalks to get the material to construct their nests. Every wasp except the queen is killed by the frost, and you may see her when she comes out of hibernation in the spring. She is much the biggest wasp you will see.
Great advice Dovefrom above. We had a wasps nest in the airbrick just to the left of our door last year. Husband said he would have to take thefloorboards up to get to it so we just left it, knowing that they wouldn't return this year. They weren't a problem and we just 'worked' round them. This year they are really keen on the new pond, spending a lot of time on the part submerged pebbles and bouncing about on the surface. I put down halves of apples for the birds and they too keep the wasps busy.
They have also been very busy on certain plants eating the ?aphids. Very good pest controllers.
We found an active wasps nest in our leylandi hedge today . We got a length of plastic electrical conduit, shaved a nozzle shape at the end and taped it to the end of a hose. We put a load of fairy liquid in the end, poked it gently into the nest, turned the hose on and ran inside. After about 5 minutes the wasp activity subsided and we went out to alter the angle to ensure complete water penetration. We repeated this several times for around half an hour then took off the conduit and jet sprayed the nest so it had disintegrated. We could see all the white larvae, and the wasps seemed to have dispersed. We will repeat hosing it down tomorrow and hopefully that will be the end of it without using any chemicals.
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Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
In the Spring you may hear them chewing at dry hogweed stalks to get the material to construct their nests. Every wasp except the queen is killed by the frost, and you may see her when she comes out of hibernation in the spring. She is much the biggest wasp you will see.
Amazing Nature!!
Great advice Dovefrom above. We had a wasps nest in the airbrick just to the left of our door last year. Husband said he would have to take thefloorboards up to get to it so we just left it, knowing that they wouldn't return this year. They weren't a problem and we just 'worked' round them. This year they are really keen on the new pond, spending a lot of time on the part submerged pebbles and bouncing about on the surface. I put down halves of apples for the birds and they too keep the wasps busy.
They have also been very busy on certain plants eating the ?aphids. Very good pest controllers.
We found an active wasps nest in our leylandi hedge today . We got a length of plastic electrical conduit, shaved a nozzle shape at the end and taped it to the end of a hose. We put a load of fairy liquid in the end, poked it gently into the nest, turned the hose on and ran inside. After about 5 minutes the wasp activity subsided and we went out to alter the angle to ensure complete water penetration. We repeated this several times for around half an hour then took off the conduit and jet sprayed the nest so it had disintegrated. We could see all the white larvae, and the wasps seemed to have dispersed. We will repeat hosing it down tomorrow and hopefully that will be the end of it without using any chemicals.