Queen wasps!

[Nicos]

We caught 3 queen wasps inside the house yesterday
It's warmed up a bit ( ie we'd upped the heating as we had visitors over the weekend) and it must have brought them out of hibernation!

The windows had been shut- so they must have snuck into the house a while back.

[scarey55]

We had loads of queen wasps show themselves when we dismantled the old garage and stone walls. There was evidence of loads of nests in there - good job we didn't do the work whilst they were active

[Hilary B]

Depends exactly what sort, but on the whole I prefer to leave wasps alone ntil towards the end of summer, unless where they are is a major nuisance.
Unless you keep bees (and sometimes even then), they are more of a positive influence in the garden than negative.
That's the 'usual' sort we get in Britain, you may have more serious ones in France!
Queen wasps look for somwhere warm (ish) to hibernate, then in spring they wake up and look for a place to build a clever paper nest....

[Florence Fennel]

I'd have been mortified, I've been scared of wasps since I was stung by a big one on Scarborough beach. We had to go to the pub and Himself ordered a pint for him and asked for a shake of vinegar for me.

[Nicos]

The wasps here seem to be much smaller than those I've seen in the UK.
These queen wasps were pretty large.

BUT- they're about 1/4 the size of a hornet!!!!!

What concerned me was I think one came from inside the wardrobe and one from the cloakroom .It would have been quite nasty to have stumbled across them whilst they were dozing!
( I presume they WOULD sting - or does hibernating mean they're knocked out completely???)

Gosh I hadn't realised I knew so little about wasps!

[Hilary B]

I'm not sure how deeply they hibernate, but I think it takes them a while to 'wake up'. Queen wasps will usually only sting if they feel endangered, but who can tell what will make a wasp feel afraid?