My tiny, wonky shed has new owners. I have never had a garden shed before, so I wasn’t expecting to give it away so quickly, but once they moved in I accepted it was rightly theirs – for this summer at least. I have never had such a good view of a wasp nest. I peer in most weeks to marvel at its progress.
It is quite exquisite in its grey, papery layers. Where there was once a solitary queen, now there are many more insects building and foraging, so the nest is only going to grow in size. These are common wasps, Vespula vulgaris, and the colony will survive into early autumn, until the first queen dies. At this point, in a fit of genetics and anger, the worker wasps will revolt against the collective and start to lay their own eggs.
