Modern Vespa

A Wasp-a-torium update.

It's mid February, and there are at least three wasps still going strong in their comfy winter digs.

We started out with five, but I believe that two may have 'passed' sometime in the past two months.

But considering that they would have almost certainly died off by now anyway if outside, especially in the hyper-bitter cold spell of late January, it's still a winning proposition for the little venom stabbers.

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

In the afternoons, I place the Wasp-a-torium in such a way that the sun will shine in and warm it's interior up, which gets them highly active for a while and they buzz around in there and walk up and down everything in their space.

Earlier, I opened the door and was going to reach in and take their honey/water tray out to clean and re-fill it, but as I was reaching in, one of them hopped down onto the feeding tray, rose up on its legs in a warning display and gave me a dirty look, so I retreated my hand and will wait until this evening when it's cooler in there and they've slowed down to get them some new food goop, which consists of honey mixed with a couple drops of water to thin it down somewhat, thinking that doing so might make it easier for them to slurp it down...though I really have no idea if that's a legitimate concern or not. They're probably just fine with the bee-poop straight out of the bottle.

I think it's great you house your buddies for the winter. I have never had any issues with wasps and had my fair share of encounters painting houses back in the day. They do look very menacing up close. I don't have much love for yellow jackets where I live. They have very bad attitudes down here. One bit not stung me next to my knee (I wear shorts at work year round) while driving across the airport on our tow vehicle. By the next morning my leg looked like Fat Bastard's and couldn't bend it. Doctor said got infected from the yellow jackets dirty mouth. Couldn't work for a week.
Last year in Baja I got off a panga on a beach and had paper wasps land all over me. Freaky but not a single sting. Guess they liked me.

This coming Saturday, the local temperature will reach a high of 75 degrees fahrenheit, and will remain at 70 to 75 degrees for four consecutive days afterwards.

With that in mind, it has come to the time for the release back into the wild of my Waspitorium overwinter guests.

I will chronicle the long-awaited and highly anticipated event as well as possible with photos and present them here.

I'm not certain if how many of the buzzy little buggers are still...'viable', but there should be at least three left of the original five, or hopefully so.

Stay tuned!