There may be times when we see something that we just can’t explain. It may happen quickly and when it happens, we want to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible.
That is what happened to a woman who noticed a strange crust on a bed that seemed to appear very quickly. She didn’t know what it was because it was in a rarely used spare room, but she was shocked when she learned the truth.
This room at her mother’s house was home to more than 5000 wasps. They had made a giant nest in the bed, which was 3 feet wide and 1.5 feet deep. When it was discovered, they had already chewed through the mattress and pillow to build the nest and it was expanding.
John Birkett is a local pest controller who was called to the scene and he realized that it was not an overnight growth. He felt that it was probably growing for a few months.
The home is in Winchester, Hampshire. There are five bedrooms in the home, and this was one of the spare bedrooms that had not been entered for a few months. When the son opened the door, he saw the nest and noticed that a window had been left open.
Birkett, of Longwood Services explain what happened: “We got a call as we normally do … but a bedroom – I thought that was unusual. I opened the door and I just couldn’t believe it. The pillow was covered in this 3ft wasps’ nest and the workers were still busy building the nest.
“In 45 years I have never seen anything like it. There must have been 5,000 wasps. It’s amazing that the woman didn’t realise she was living with them.
“I got dressed up like a spaceman and tried to destroy as many as I could with the workers flying around the room. In that nest there must have been up to 700 queen wasps.”
Prior to this, the largest nest that he had ever found in a home was the size of a tennis ball.
He was able to clear things up by using bug spray to kill the wasps. The blanket on the bed was even saved after the ordeal.
Despite the difficulties he faced and the family being frustrated, he was not very happy with killing so many wasps. He said: “It was a work of art and they had worked so hard, but she looked at it and said, ‘No, no, no – you’ve got to get rid of it.’ If they did that in three-and-a-half months, that’s amazing, isn’t it? They’re just little things.”
