QUEEN WITHOUT A CROWN

A loud, steady, droning buzz in the living room tells you that you have a queen wasp looking for a hibernating place - probably in your curtains.

I like wasps so I am dead against killing them.  They feed their young on cabbage white butterly caterpillars, gooseberry sawfly larvae and other pesky bush meat.  I'm speaking here as a gardener.  

This is the third in our house this autumn.  I never see them come in; they just appear, zooming around trying to find a place to hide.  Eventually this lady landed on the window and was easy to capture with a glass and a piece of card.  After posing for me she was released out of doors.

I'm afraid this is my regular insect-catching glass and so none too clean, which accounts for some blurring in the photos.

Wasp queens are bigger than the workers. They sleep through till the warmer days of spring and then search out a place to start building a nest, made from wasp paper.  This 'paper' is made by scraping wood off old fences or garden furniture and mixing it with saliva.  Queenie only makes a small round nest to raise the first brood of workers.  They then take over the work of nest building and feeding the next brood of babies on caterpillars, while Her Majesty settles down to egg laying.