I’d unlocked the car, hit the control for the garage door opener, started the car and was backing up when I noticed a large black irregular circle high on the wall to the right of my kitchen door. I scrunched my eyes and looked hard—willing my eyesight to improve enough to make out just what it was. In past years I’d had clumps of thousands of Daddy Long Legs—perhaps a foot wide and two feet long solid pile of DLL’s that extended two or three inches out from the wall. Seen from a distance, they looked like huge moles; but if you touched them, the solid mass would shatter immediately into thousands of DLL’s scurrying off in every direction possible. Yet the DLL’s had never clustered in this spot and it looked like a much smaller clump. Late as I was, I couldn’t stand it. I had to go look. This is what I found:
Tiny black wasps building their nest.
Recent high winds had blown down the lamp in my gazebo and I’d noticed the wasp nest high up in the pointed top of the ceiling had been knocked down also. Obviously, this is where they’d decided to relocate. Most of the crew was just hanging out in a clump while a few dozen hard workers were constructing the incredible paper hive out of their own bodily juices.
As a reformed papermaker, I’m intrigued by the process. I love having them so close, yet fear if I let them build it so near the main door I use to enter the house, that it will create problems later. I’ve had hives around the property the entire 12 years I’ve been here and they’ve never created a problem. They stay high up and near their hive and I’ve never been stung or even buzzed by the black wasps. One year they built their nest on the outside of my hall window, so I could see into it!!! It was near a door I never used and between the window bars and the glass, so it was very protected. I absolutely loved it, as every time I walked down the hall to and from my bedroom, I could look in and see them cuddled into the internal chambers. Unfortunately, I came home from a 2 month vacation at the beach to discover my vacation renters had had Pasiano remove the nest! I was heartbroken.
Now the dilemma is: should I have Pasiano smoke them out and knock down the nest tomorrow before they invest any more time in building it, or do I let it remain, knowing I’ll have to have it removed when a friend deathly afraid of wasps visits me in a few months? I love the feeling of sharing this property with so many different types of wildlife: squirrels, snakes, possums, skunks, lizards, toads, dragonflies, moths, katydids, rhinoceros beetles, leaf-eater ants, rainbirds, praying mantises, walking sticks, butterflies, dragonflies, grackles, orioles, thrushes, seedeaters, bats, an owl, huge solitary red wasps and the fiercely social small black wasps. The problems only come when their needs conflict with mine. The squirrels ate every papaya on my tree this year. The possums stealing catfood leftovers often occasion loud midnight fits of barking by the dogs. Coming out to find my entire plumeria tree stripped of leaves and flowers overnight and my studio with 6 inch high piles of soil and stones they had carried up and deposited there to clear their tunnels meant waging a war on the leafcutters—something necessary; but yet I hated to do it. I love watching them—the cutter ants high in the bush or tree sawing the leaves off and letting them fall to the ground, where other workers saw off smaller pieces and load up for the trip back to the nest. If the smaller ants confront a problem on the rocky road to home, huge general ants come out to advise and help. Chains of busy ants form a freeway from the harvesting site to the nest.
But scorpions? Sorry. My curiosity only goes so far. Black widows and scorpions can expect the death penalty in my house.
Nearly 3 AM and I still don’t know what my decision will be concerning the wasps. I welcome your advice.
Sweet dreams.—Judy
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
This is gonna sound cruel; wait til its dark and give them a strong spray of the 25ft spray that kills them on contact. If they get pissed off at you of your dog (most likely Diego) they can kill him or really hurt you. I’ve got the spray you need.
Tony
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Well, I don’t want to kill them. They really are no bother and they need to live somewhere. My main problem is that I’d have to move them when Duckie comes because wasps are the one thing in nature that absolutely psych him out. The nest is so near completion now, though, that I’m going to let it stay until he visits again. Pasiano and I found two different nests that blew down in those high winds. That’s where they came from. I can see just the stub of one nest on the side of the front terrace. There are still a few wasps and eggs in it…Bet they are in the process of moving. I’ll make sure they don’t stray onto your property…ha. I guess this is a perfect illustration of how all of nature experiences loss and must respond by rebuilding and getting on with life. I doubt they’ll miss their old home when they have a new one. If we’d had this picture of the wasps rebuilding before we could have used it for our book cover!!! Well, perhaps not.
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leave them alone. Wasps eat millions of tiny pesty insects like aphids, thrips and soft scale who try to demolish your garden.
They are essential in a balanced environment. I have never knocked down or poisoned wasps and have never been stung by them as long as I did not inadvertently touch their nest. This nest is safely out of your way. I know you Judy, you are a live and let live person. They are no problem now so just let them do their thing to benefit your property.
You guys with the poison need to watch the Helstrom Chronicle. We all need to be here, for pete’s sake. This little wasps are going to kill no one.
Lordy.
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Aha…just saw your comment after I had written mine. I agree. I love watching all the life that exists on this patch of ground where I am just one part of the ecology. Every few months, I find a new neighbor. And these neighbors stay! Ahem. Just kidding. I’m so glad you are in your own new hive (I need to check whether wasp nests are called hives) in Maryland. I will be buzzing your way in a few months, so get my cell ready!!!
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I cannot stand the little bu….. Lying on a lounge under the palapa by the pool, I can see several nests in the making perhaps 15 feet above me. Tony, email me the spray.
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Cannot type today, meant laying.
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You may wish you were laying, but you were right the first time, Ron. How goes it at the beach? Would I die if I went to La Manz in June? Need I ask?
Old English teachers never die.
They just advise on “lay or lie?”
Driving friends who are grammatically hazy.
Completely crazy!!!!
xoxoxo Judy
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How does Yolanda feel about having the wasps that close? I worry that at some point the lil devils incarnate are going to get very annoyed by the iron gate swinging so close to their new castle. If they’re still there when I get there, you’ll have to get someone else to feed the animals, ’cause I’m not getting within 10 feet of that nest! (Oh, is the one on the upstairs patio wall still there?) Sheesh! They’re everywhere, everywhere, I tell ya!
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You could’ve been a naturalist. However, this is one experiment you don’t want to have go terribly wrong. One time out in the woods while walking with the dogs, Tony and Freya were attacked by wasps. We managed to get out of there without further injury–I think we ran like hell– but the ones on Freya were hard to get out of her velcro hair. I put baking soda paste on T’s and F’s wounds. Later we went back to the hole from which the wasps came and bombed it with some kind of chemical. No, I didn’t feel terrible about it. Not at all.
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Will your friend have to go near them? Could she go in via a different door? I love your respect for nature! 🙂
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Yes..he would and wasps are the one thing he is phobic about. All ended well. The wasps were removed without harm and went about building a new nest. Other consideration was that as the nest got larger, we were afraid the door would come in contact with it. Just read all your poems. You have been having fun, and so did I, reading them. I’m curious about the name of your blog.
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I’m glad there was a happy ending for you and the wasps. As for the blog name, when I was little, there was a cartoon called Noggin the Nog and my sister, Nuala, got the nickname Noggin. It made sense to my family that if Nuala = Noggin, then Oonagh must = Oggin so we were Oggin and Noggin. We still sometimes get called that or a variation thereof! 😉
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Very cute. Much better than my childhood names of “Pole Cat” and “Jooj Pooj”!
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