Three weeks in the weird and wonderful world of Steve Homewood
Part 1
I've just had an unusual few weeks, natural history wise, so I thought I might tell you about it.
Meet Jasper, a European wasp. This and the German wasp are the two common wasps in the British Isles. They both live in colonies, in nests that they construct, usually in roofs, hollow trees or underground, but not Jasper and his pal though.
It all started 3 years ago.
I grow a few chillies at home in the bay window and leave the top window open all summer in the hope that ladybirds and hoverflies might come in and take the greenfly off the plants. This works very well but still the greenfly are a problem.
Until the first wasp appeared in the summer of '21, I didn't know how keen they were on eating aphids. I thought it useful though, so I largely ignored the little striped thing. He, (I think a male?) came in every day for about 6 weeks. He would arrive at dawn and would go out, and presumably go home to the nest, at dusk and in late Autumn he disappeared.
In Aug' 2022 another arrived, or was it the same one? It had the same feeding habits, just eat all day at his leisure. This one slept overnight though, in a Lemon scented 'Angel eyes' Geranium. I can't imagine it was last year's visitor but it did seem rather unusual and I thought they only lived for one season a year? This is what I love about being a Naturalist.

And so, three weeks ago in came the third wasp in the third year, 'Jasper the Great' as I later named him, (Jasper used to be a nickname for a wasp when I was a boy), and, after two weeks, 'Jasper II' arrived through the top window on the very same day that Amazon delivered my 1.5Kilo pot of raw unpasteurised Ukrainian wild flower honey. My world was about to change!
Wasps love Bee's honey by the way, and as soon as I unpacked it the Jaspers came straight over to check it out. What could I do? I offered up a blob on my finger and walked them back over to the chilli plants and wiped it and them onto the rim of the bigger plant pot where they now both have their treat twice a day in return for eating the greenflies. You can actually see the greenfly on the plant in the above photo.
The really weird and wonderful thing now, is that these two pals of mine come and find me in the morning by flying in through the bedroom window to wake my up buzzing loudly in front of my face. It gets better by the way;
Once I'm up, they escort me to the cupboard where the honey is kept.
I'm sure they would ever bite the hand that feeds them but I'll be sure to re-order more honey asap.
I'll keep you all posted. Meanwhile I will post another blog tomorrow re the fossils that I've been finding while filming for a slide show I'm hoping to give, entitled;
'Over & Under Seaford Head'
Bye for now, Steve
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