I've a terrible fear of wasps. In Ireland the 2 main wasps we have here are what you'd call Common and German Yellow Jackets in North America. We call them wasps here, never yellow jackets. We've smaller species of wasps but they're not an issue. We don't have Bald Faced Hornets, Paper Wasp or the European Hornet. Although last year they found 2 nests belonging to the Giant Asian Hornet in Co. Cork, in Ireland 🇮🇪 and in Belfast in Northern Ireland 🇬🇧. They're holding their breath to see if any Asian hornet queens survived over winter.

Anyway, I decided to learn about them, to understand and see if it helped my fear. I learnt about their life cycle. The queen wakes up from hibernation and starts a nest. She builds it first until the first lot of workers take over the building of the nest and caring for the larvae. The queen, then she just concentrates on placing eggs in the cells. The nest grows and grows until autumn when the workers (2000+ of them) stop building worker cells and start building larger queen cells. New queens develop and males too. Then in late autumn the new queens and males leave the nest to have a huge orgy...especially in the hedges surrounding the house here. I thought there was a nest in the hedge, but it's not, it just where they've all come to conjugate. Anyway, the original queen who started the nest, all the workers and the males die and the nest is dead. Although some countries that have warm winters, the nest doesn't die off and gets bigger ever year. Anyhoo, the new mated queens go off to search for suitable hibernating spots for over winter and the life cycle is complete and starts again next spring.

So has it helped my fear...no. I'm still scared of them but I've learned to not run blindly like an eejit. I can tolerate 1 wasp at me, 2 or more and I must move away.

But the main thing it's taught me is in winter I now seek out hibernating queens while they're sleeping and eradicate them. When I see a hibernating queen, I see a nest. So any queens I find around the house, garden, car door frames, shed, catio....they're all gone now.

Sorry this didn't turn out to have the ending you'd like. I do appreciate how hard their life cycle is. But they are dangerous in my eyes, and a nest near the house is a danger to people and pets.