"Set Square" wrote in
:

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
D.M. Procida wrote:

I've just been to put some more rubbish up in the loft, and I was a
little alarmed to discover what appear to be dead wasps littered
around. They're wasp-wasted, anyway, with a smooth black and yellow
abdomen, and furry thorax and head, though I'm not sure what they
actually are.

Some of them are just dead, but others appear to be tightly wrapped
in a thin filmy covering, as though they were new wasps packaged for
sale. I couldn't see any live ones, or hear any.

Any idea what these are, and what ought to be done to avoid an
infestation problem?

Have a close look around for any little chinese-lantern-shaped papier
mache objects hanging from the rafters. Queen wasps spend the winter
in these and then emerge in the spring (or sometimes even earlier if
we get a warm day) ready to start a new colony.

If you find any "lanterns", give them a liberal dose of wasp killer
and then scrape them off the rafters and destroy them. The bodies you
found may be queens which came out too early and then died when it got
cold again.


Yeah - found a queen one morning in my bathroom. Huge thing shudder She'd
taken a liking to the air freshner and was sat, sleepily, on top of it.
Didn't last long - 3 second burst of wasp killer. I'd still like to know
how she got in :-S

--
john

"Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what
they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand." -
Putt's Law