Huge wasp nest takes over wildlife trust's office

A nature reserve manager has been working from home after a group of wasps took over her office and built a 1m (3.2ft) nest around a bookshelf of ring binders.

Eilish Rothney, a nature reserve manager for the Trinity Broads at the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, said after weeks of being out conducting surveys, she returned to her office on 11 June in Ormesby St Michael and saw wasps "buzzing round the corner".

She found a nest about "a quarter of the size it is now" and said she worked for more than two hours before calling it a day.

"It was just fascinating to watch the wasps coming and going and building up the lovely layers of colour — it looks like exotic paper," she said.

"It starts on the floor behind a box I put there, and they've come up on the inside and spread out on the box, and they've gone in all the little crevices around the binders and shelves."

She said wasps on the marshes would have to deal with roaming cattle and sheep, so she challenged her inner "ungulate" to stroll through the office like a "browsing cow".

In the autumn, it is expected the wasps will leave the nest.

She said: "The intention is just to leave it be and eventually they will all leave. The females who emerge will then go off and try and hibernate and come back next spring as queens. All the worker wasps will eventually die off and go hunting for food."

A picture of the nest was shared by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, who said: "Thousands of new colleagues moved in without permission, skipped recruitment entirely and ignored the office hot-desking policy."

While people have been divided in the post's comments, Rothney said people do not need to be afraid of them.

She said: "I would encourage people, if you've got wasps that are bothering you, just to keep calm and try and move away. If you keep calm, they will sense that and won't feel threatened."

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