Living together

A couple of months ago, during the lockdown, I caught an episode of BBC television’s Springwatch. Chris Packham was showing the marks on his shed where wasps had been scratching off the wood in order to use it to build a nest. How observant he was, I thought, and how knowledgeable, and aren’t wasps extraordinary, and how extraordinary that I’d never known that this was what wasps did.

For the last four weeks or so, Frog has been building some solar panels for heating the water in our (small) swimming-pool, and last week he sat on the steps next to the shed, plumbing them in.

The shed, the pool and the solar panels, with plumbing in progress

‘Hey,’ he called to me. ‘Wasps are eating our shed. I can see the marks where they’ve been and I can see them doing it.’

    I hurried over, with my camera.

    Synchronicity had struck again. Not only did I now understand what was going on, but I had a chance to see for myself what Chris had been talking about.

Wasp at work

What the wasp left behind

Striped shed, after the wasps have been

‘We ought to follow them,’ I said, ‘and see if we can find their nest.’

    ‘Yes,’ said Frog.

    But neither of us made a move. Even though the wasps seemed good-natured and hadn’t minded me photographing them, there were a lot of them. It didn’t strike us as terribly sensible to get any closer.

    I was surprised however that Frog had agreed with me. He'd come a long way from the person who used to advocate ‘chemical death’ whenever nature invaded.

Later I visited a neighbour to drop off some runner beans. She lets me have her horse manure for my veg garden and I try and reciprocate with some of its produce. She had a garden full of grandchildren but took the time to show me the wild bees who’d made a nest in a wall of her house. The house used to be a barn and the bees had chosen an old beam full of holes. The little black shapes buzzed in and out, ignoring us.

    ‘What a compliment,’ I exclaimed. ‘They must love your garden.’

    ‘Yes,’ she beamed. ‘They’re no trouble and we just use a different part of the garden.’

The wild-bee nest in an old beam

I remembered a bees’ nest that Frog and I had seen hanging like a wind-sock in the doorway of a Greek house during a holiday many years ago (so long ago that I’ve lost the picture unfortunately) and the swallows that nested above the shop doorways and flew around the village's mini-market, perching on top of the fridges.

Greek swallows above a shop doorway

And why shouldn’t they? And why shouldn’t we leave space for bees? And why shouldn’t wasps have a bit of our shed? We can spare it.