I’m living with wasps. Well, as usual, that’s an exaggeration. I’m co-existing with wasps – in the garden.
Those of you taking notes may recall that, earlier this year, I got rid of an incipient wasps’ bike from the inside of ma hut. You interrupt my flow to say: “Why’s it called a bike, Rab?”
Good question. To answer it, I looked online, but a spokesperson – geddit? bike? – had no good etymology to offer, except to point out that the proper or archaic name for a bike (or byke) is a vespiary. Sounds almost holy.
I got rid of a vespiary inside the hut last year too. But, this year, a second front opened up in a bird box nailed to the side of the hut.
I’ve two of these, and the birds just ignore them. “Look, they’ve got wee round doors. Rab must think we’re Hobbits or something.”
But, this year, wasps took to one of them with alacrity. Initially, I thought of the bykiary: ‘I’ll need to get rid of that.’ But I’d been intrigued by the fact that, in getting rid of wasps’ nests previously, the beasties hadn’t attacked me.
I’m sure they would have done if they’d had bairns in there. But, at worst, they just buzzed aboot ma heid. Perhaps they were put off by all the product on my barnet. Perhaps they weren’t as aggressive as we’d been led to believe.
That said, I’ve learned the hard way not to give insects the benefit of the doubt.
The saga of the Humphreys
You’ll remember the wee moth that I christened Humphrey and that I taught to give me a paw and fetch sticks. Next thing, millions of Humphreys were eating my carpets.
Still, I read up on wasps and found that they provide a valuable function in the garden, eating pests. I thought: ‘Well, if they eat midges, I’ll build a palace for them and bake them pies filled with honey.’
So, I’ve let them be and, so far, they’ve let me be too. True, I find their incessant droning sinister. I can see their paper nest inside the bird box hole, and it’s disconcerting to think of all the alien-looking larvae in there. I doot if ooter space has anything scarier in it than oor insects.
One new problem is that I’ve started painting the shed and will have to leave the bit near their bike as the beasties will probably get shirty, and probably want to know if I had planning permission.
Finding a colour scheme for wasps – or not
They mightn’t like the colour scheme either. Ever desperate to avoid the dull, “forest” green that’s the sole hue usually offered hut-painters, I was delighted to find “lime green” in a DIY store.
Alas, it turned out lurid. I’ll probably have to buy a forest green to cover it up. Why can’t we have a jolly emerald green of the sort that used to grace allotments, bowling greens and so forth?
But I digress. And I don’t suppose the wasps mind about the colour really.
If pushed, they’d probably prefer yellow and black stripes. But I’m not going that far for them.
Magnanimously, I have let them live. And, at the time of writing anyway, they have done the same for me.
