I recently undertook an expedition to the far reaches of the loft. Amongst the wondrous things to be seen up there are a couple of wasp nests in various stages. A wasp nest starts life in spring when the queen finds a suitable spot and creates a stalk (called a petiole) with a single hexagonal cell hanging from it. She will then build more cells around that and lay eggs in them.
These will then develop into worker wasps who continue to build the nest, while the queen dedicates herself to laying more eggs in it. The nest itself is made from strips of wood that the wasps tear off from your fence panels or garden furniture, mixed with saliva and wax. It truly is a thing of great beauty. 
Wasps regulate the temperature of the nest with water and by fanning it with their wings. The queen will now lay eggs that eventually hatch into more queens and male drones, once they have gone through the larval stage and pupated. These will leave the nest to mate. The drones will die and the fertilised queens will find somewhere to hibernate over winter, before finding a new nest site in the spring. The worker wasps and the old queen left in the nest will starve to death.
See also: Wasps – Free e-book
Wow that is amazing to find the nest indoors. I have seen similar nests in trees. It is beautiful.
British wasps like to be cosy 😉
I suspect that most people are unaware of the variety of creatures sharing their houses.
It’s good to share 😉
I’ve often heard wasps scraping wood off my bird feed shelter as I sit in the garden. If you get a chance to dissect the nest, they are the most delicate of structures
They are surprisingly noisy! Unfortunately the nest is out of my reach, but I can imagine they’re fascinating.
They are indeed works of art, if only the wasps themselves were more pleasantly designed and not quite so buzzy and stingy!
Let’s hope evolution works on this problem 😉
A reblogué ceci sur Rattiesforeverworldpresscom.