A wasp!? In January?!

[Dilbertian]

Dd just sat on a wasp in the kitchen, and it stung her.

A wasp in the UK in January?! Never heard of such a thing. Never heard it at all, no buzzing, nothing.

Large wasp?
Queen perhaps.

Winter honey bees are wasp shape and around in January in some places.

Hornet perhaps? I sat on one on our sofa in November. Bloody hurt too

Sometimes Queen wasps come into window frames or houses to hibernate. If they are disturbed or the room warms up , then they can emerge. I once had one fall into a bed from a skylight when I opened the blind. Gave me a fright as I am allergic to the sting. I also found one in a box on top of my wardrobe.

Would it survive stinging a human? This one's alive. I captured it in the handheld vac.

There was a wasp on the table at the snooker in London yesterday. They had to stop play to remove it. Me and dh were saying how odd it was to see a wasp in January.

Been doing some googling .

I never thought about what bees did in winter. If anything, I would have assumed that bees died out in winter and were new every year. Maybe dormant eggs or something like that.

I had no idea that they could survive cold winter temperatures, and sometimes even left the hive during winter.

Fascinating creatures!

(Still not sure it was a bee, though.)

The queens hibernate and wake up if warm. Then they fly round at shoulder height slowly making a low hum and frighten the living daylights out of you when they just appear!

We found a couple of wasps in our living room a few weeks ago - I think they came down with the Xmas decs from the loft! Also saw an almighty queen bee (very dozy) bumbling around our garden at the weekend, madness that they're able to survive these temperatures.

We’ve had two this week, one woke up in the wardrobe and I had to swat it as it was quite cross….then DD got stung yesterday in another room. First time I’ve ever noticed this happening here!

Wasp

There was a wasp in our bedroom in rural Scotland at Christmas. Too weird.

My friend got stung by a wasp in her pyjama sleeve last week!

It'll be a young queen who's been hibernating in your house and has woken early.

Weird - we had one in our kitchen last week. I wondered if we’d woken it up by heating the house after being away for Christmas- but it’s not the first time we’ve done that whereas it IS the first time I’ve seen a January wasp

We used to have a zombie wasp in our house which terrified my husband in his study by flying round when he started work then would vanish when he asked me to help deal with it (he's allergic and nervous)! Eventually after a year (!) I found it sitting on the recesses at the top of the wooden Venetian blind when we changed the blind!

I saw a butterfly in our front garden today, most surprised!

We found 2 giant wasps in our house recently! One after we got the Christmas decorations down from the loft, and one after we put them back. I presumed they had been hibernating (?!) in the loft.

Do you have a log burner? We’ve found wasps crawling out of our log basket in the living room a couple of times. I assumed they were hibernating in the logs and being brought inside woke them up!