A wasp nest update

Last night, two days after the tiny nest (in my last post) was discovered, I found a huge, and not very impressed Common Wasp queen buzzing around in the conservatory. I'm assuming that she is the likely rightful owner of the nest, and that it mustn't have been as old or abandoned as I'd originally thought after all. From what I can gather from doing a little bit of research on the internet, this was the very start of a wasps' nest, built by the young queen for the winter, complete with a few cells in readiness for slightly warmer weather and laying her first batch of eggs. She would then tend to the larvae until they are fully fledged workers, after which she would then stay in the nest laying further eggs whilst the workers took over nest building and tending to the larvae.

Common Wasp deadheading thistle to obtain the sap

I do feel bad that her home was ruined (at least there were no eggs or larvae yet), but obviously relieved that it wasn't a more established and active nest that was accidentally pulled apart. (After she'd cooled down a little (literally as well as metaphorically!) we put her outside in a quiet part of the garden where there is a log pile and also a summer house so plenty of places to shelter and wood to chew up to start a new home.)

As much as I would have liked to get my macro lens warmed up with a few photos of this large wasp queen, I figured she was probably [and understandably] annoyed enough so I've just dug out an old photo of a Common Wasp worker instead for this post. In late summer they seem to love the sap of thistles, chewing through the stems underneath flowers that are past their best (deadheading apparently) and I have been able to take plenty of close up photos of these beautiful (but I appreciate not everyone's favourite) insects without them hardly seeming to notice or mind.