"John Stumbles" wrote in message
...

There's no need to race, there are no living wasps in your nest. Please
don't worry.

I'm sure the nest isn't _full_ of living wasps, but I wouldn't be sure
there aren't any live ones around. I got stung by a wasp about 5 weeks ago
(mid-December). The wasp was lurking on an indoor windowsill on our
stairway, but since we'd had a nest in our attic (which, under Mary's
influence, I hadn't done anything about!) and had just had the loft hatch
open I'm pretty sure it came down from the attic. In other years and/or in
other houses I've also seen large wasps flying slowly around in the attic
in winter. Maybe oop North they do all die in the winter but in the soft
South a few can obviously live on well past their sell-by date.

These large wasps are hibernating queens. They might or might not have
originated from the nest in your house - or from another you don't know
about :-) They usually fly some distance from their nest to hibernate
though. They stir on warm days or when disturbed.

Queen wasps rarely sting. They do if they feel threatened though. I was
stung by one once which was snug in a finger of a gardening glove. If I were
roused from a deep sleep I might defend myself from a perceived threat too.

As the colony progresses the successive generations of worker wasps are
smaller than they are at the beginning of the season, there's less food for
them because of the diminishing number of adults to feed them. So the big
ones you see in winter months are always queens and not leftovers. Single
wasps, apart from queens, can't survive for long without the rest of the
colony, that's one of the definitions of 'social' insects.

It's true that in warmer climes social wasp colonies do survive the winter,
the nests become very large and the occupants, by sheer numbers, are
definitely pests. This has happened in some parts of Australia and New
Zealand and it's a problem. But unless global warming speeds up hugely it's
not going to happen here in our lifetimes. The north/south divide doesn't
favour wasps in this country. Yet.

Perhaps we should all try harder to prevent global warming if only on that
count?

By the way, the social wasp is not native to Australasia. It was taken, like
the rabbit, by the greatest threat to Earth there is - Man.

Some you win ...

Mary