I’m not usually fazed by bugs and critters, though I’m not very keen on giant spiders, but we’ve got a new visitor to the garden that I really don’t care for.
Coinciding with the Great Tit chicks flying the nest (and it might not be a coincidence), I noticed something new flying into one of the other nest boxes of the Sparrow Nester.
The noise was quite tremendous and what I saw filled me with horror.
It was a very large, wasp like insect, about 4cm long and it sounded like a giant bumblebee.
It flew into the nest box and then sometime later reappeared. After some lengthy detective work, it became quite clear that it was collecting wood pulp for a nest and food for its brood.
This means it is a queen.
I checked it out on the Internet, as for a while I thought it might be the giant hornet that’s been in the press recently, but it’s not.
Trouble is it is very near my beehive that is waiting for bees and hornets have a tendency to not only rob bees of their honey, but also attack them. At the moment this queen is rearing brood, but when that hatches we will have dozens of hornets buzzing around and by the end of the summer there will be hundreds.
Am still deciding my next move.
The shame of it is that I do feel really privileged to have her in the garden and it’s yet another sign that the wildlife here approve of the Eco Shed.
