Wasps in December?

I thought I had my blip for today. As it was Ben's last morning at college, and he only had one lesson, I agreed to drive him in so that I could have a walk round Stamford. I thought this might re-ignite my festive mood, which has fallen a bit flat since Sunday, but it didn't really work. Despite some winter sunshine, even this beautiful old town looked a bit half-hearted in its Christmas joy, though the buildings were still lovely and as photogenic as ever.

In the afternoon our neighbours popped round to see if we wanted to come and retrieve a wasp's nest from behind a low stone wall in their garden. Entomologists love a good wasp's nest as there are quite a few other interesting invertebrates that live inside them, so we trooped off to excavate it. It wasn't huge, only about 30cm in diameter, but the wasps must have removed that quantity of soil during its construction, which is no mean feat. And the workmanship was amazing, with layers of hexagonal papery cells separated by surprisingly elegant pillars. 

At this time of year all the wasps should have been dead, particularly as we've had a few hard frosts, but when we brought the nest inside to examine it, about thirty emerged, very slow and sleepy. It was also full of hoverfly larvae, Volucella spp., which feed on the detritus that accumulates at the bottom of the nest as well as a number of other beetle and fly larvae. It's now been placed in an emergence cage so that we can find out what all of them are. Pete said it was his best Christmas present ever!!