Waspish

We found a second nest of Common Wasps (Vespula vulgaris) in the garden yesterday. They were inconveniently busy, right at the foot of the big compost heap behind the summer house. Fortunately, they seem to be occupied with other things at the moment (like scraping the top layer off our wooden fence) and weren't too concerned that we were adding barrows-full of grass clippings on top of their home. Above and below are pictures of one of the females I found gathering additional material for the nest. There are at least five species of very similar wasp possible here in East Anglia, so a good look at face and abdomen is important. The pointed markings down the middle of her abdomen (above) and the black mark which extends down into the yellow on her face (below) help to clinch the ID.

Common Wasps are social insects that live in large paper nests, typically underground though they'll occasionally take over a hollow tree or attic (!!) instead. Only the queens survive the winter. They then build a small nest and lay a few eggs, which develop into non-reproductive female workers. These enlarge the nest and care for further offspring, and the queen retires to a life of egg-laying and being "waited on" by her workers. In late autumn, some of the eggs develop into males and new queens, which leave the nest and reproduce. Only these new queens will survive the winter; the old queen, the males and all the workers will die.

Common Wasps have a well-deserved reputation for being aggressively merciless in defense of their nest, so we always treat their homes with caution in the garden — so far without injury on either side.