Nature on your farm.

Found bees nesting in a bolthole in a wall in the yard.. I've been told they are reusing an old bird nest

I went to the local bottle bank yesterday and the wasps were like exocet missiles flying outta the bins at me. Stand corrected but I think its at least a month earlier than you'd normally see wasps at the bottle bank. I presume it's due to the inclement wet weather.

I read up on the live cycle of the common wasp (Vespula vulgaris) and in fairness I now understand why they hang out in the bottle banks at the end of Summer. Apparently all adult worker wasps are infertile females and they actively kill and collect protein (other insects and carrion) to feed to the larvae in the hive and in return the larvae secrete a sugar rich soluion which the adult wasps feed on. Adult wasps cannot digest/live on protein. At the end of the Summer the Queen wasp stops laying female worker eggs and instead lays eggs that will turn out to be new Queen's and male drones and then the Queen dies. When these larvae develop, mature and take flight the worker wasps in the hive are left without a sugary food source so they go in search of a substitute and that is why we get plagued with wasps coming into our houses, vehicles, sheds, etc. In fairness they are trying to survive.

I don't like wasps and avoid them as best I can. However I leave a few jam jars (braced horizontally between stones) with jam in them along a wall in the upper yard for last of the worker wasps to feed on before the colder weather kills them off.

They are back this morning, chattering as they fly about.

We've a late clutch here,hatched two weeks ago and left the nest yesterday.