These other paper aficionados have set up house right over one of my studio’s windows. Oh dear.
Update: There are two of them. One on either side of the house. The other is high up in a redwood. We’ve decided to let them stay… for now. We’ve been told they are mellow paper wasps, as opposed to the scary hornets we had a few years ago. Even so, I sure don’t want to offend them.
ooh! I suggest you keep your fingers out of their way. Maybe call a pest man? Don’t s’pose you can wait til I get there? :-)
I already have a call in to a pest control place. Of course, we didn’t find it until late on Friday afternoon… I sure wish there was some way of getting it down without poisoning the nest, but I’m sure that’s highly unlikely. It’s huge–very impressive!
I hope they are at least outside!
Thankfully, yes! Although I wish they were a little further from the window…
I sympathise with you!
We had a HUGE bee hive in between floors, and it took a lot of research and money to remove it properly. I finally did find a bee keeper, knowledgeable, who knew exactly how to reach it with the least damage to the exterior brick wall. After that we had to leave it open to dry, had raccoons move in, and finally found a good crew of brick layers to patch it up; indeed now you can’t see any traces of the most expensive pain in the neck visitors removal ever!
I wish you best of luck! Be careful and stay away from that area…
xoxox
Oh Anna! That’s horrible! I’m so sorry to hear you had to go through that. Nightmarish! Ugh.
I just discovered we have a second one on the other side of the house, dangling from a redwood branch. It’s twice the size of this one. It looks scary! I’ve had a couple of people tell me that I’m basically a bad person if I have them removed. They are beneficial, they are living harmoniously with nature… I’ve tried explaining that with my health issues, even a simple sting or two could be quite serious. I wasn’t believed. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind. I really don’t understand people sometimes.
At any rate, I hope the bees stay well away from the insides of your house! Agh!
Whoever tells you not to remove them, tell them they are welcome to come and take them to their property…
Be careful and con’t go near them.
xoxox
Thanks Anna! Indeed! I appreciate your support on the matter.
Holy CRAP, that’s a bee hive?? Lord, I really like bees and all, but this is a bit too close! Good luck!!
Eek! I hope by now they are long gone. If it is a danger to you, you don’t need to feel any guilt over getting rid of the hive, even if it were bees which are having such a difficult time of it lately. Paper wasps, on the other hand, are not suffering and you need have no compunction about killing them all.
It is probably too late, and not feasible if they were sprayed, but I wonder what you could make out of a paper wasp hive?
Thanks Amy. We, soft-hearted suckers that we are, have decided to let them stay for now. (They and, I should add, the other, much larger, nest we’ve since discovered dangling in a redwood above our house.) They seem mellow and have been minding their own business. We consulted with an exterminator who said that they are not yellow-jackets, and they are not the really nasty scary hornets we had a few years ago. He said these are indeed paper wasps and they usually aren’t aggressive, assuming we don’t hurl a rock in their direction or spray them with a hose or do anything else they might frown upon. Although I confess, now that garbage/recycling night is again here, it does make me nervous chucking things in the bins directly below them. I hope they don’t frown upon noise! Or get too interested in the remains of flavored drinks cans…
Wahhhhh…..! On the other hand, everyone says they will vacate the nest after the first freeze in the Autumn. Their pretty, unpoisoned nest…
I am glad they are not bothering you :) Even better if they leave their creation to a paper artist in the fall!
Well I can see I need to add your blog to my reader again! Grr!
Anyway, I’m wondering what has happened to these two nests? I would e rather uncomfortable with them there too…
Thanks Birdie. And thanks for re-adding me. I’ve been having quite a time keeping up with everyone since the end of Reader. Theoretically, everything should’ve moved over to where I wound up, but in practice I’ve been finding blogs missing, new posts not appearing, and just general mayhem. Alas.
The larger of the nests, the one dangling from the tree, has already self-destructed. Big hunks of it have been falling down, and the residents seem to have moved out. I’m going to share the hunks with a nearby friend who likes to use such things in her artist’s books. The one on my studio still just… is. It hasn’t grown, and they really haven’t bothered us. However, we need to have the roof worked on before winter. Neither we nor the roofers (especially not the roofers!) want to test the little ones’ mellow and easy-going nature to such a degree, so we’re going to have to get the exterminator back out before work starts.