Yesterday afternoon was eventful to say the least. A post appeared on social media to say there was a wasp nest near to Woodlesford Lock that needed treating. The post went on to explain many people had been stung and the wasps kept swarming around people as they past. The Council couldn't treat it due to it being located near to the canal and the Canal & Rivers Trust couldn't get one of their Contractors to treat it for at least another week.
As I had a free couple of hours I went to look at what was going on. The wasps were indeed acting very aggressively and this was because someone had plugged the entrance to the nest with a stick, the Queen was trapped inside and their behaviour reflected their situation. I couldn't leave this nest as doing nothing to help doesn't fit with how our Business works: the risk of stings to passers by was huge, if a child removed the stick the following minutes doesn't bear thinking about and the stress the insects were under just isn't right.
The Canals and Rivers Trust gave me their approval to treat the nest on their behalf so that is what I did. As soon as I removed the stick from the nest literally hundreds of wasps swarmed, I was obviously wearing PPE but I had to stand back for while to let them settle back down a bit before I could go back and treat the nest. Once the nest was treated and I was satisfied that it was dead I dug it out and filled the hole back in.
Here are a few pictures of the job - there are no pictures of the swarm as I was busy being stung :-)
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