Regicide

THAT'S RIGHT. LAST NIGHT I KILLED ROYALTY. It was a Queen wasp to be precise. Last year I had a nest right along the eves where I live. At c.4am, attracted by my light (which always stays on; I'm v often awake at that hour) and able to infiltrate my never-quite-shutting properly sash window through the middle or the bottom these horrible blighters entered my room with an ominous buzz and proceeded to persecute me by divebombing the naked lightbulb. It was impossible to ignore them; every so often they would smack into the ceiling for no apparent reason and drop to the floor. I had no intention of getting stung and so armed myself with a newspaper (when I was too broke to buy chemical weapons) or (ideally) cockroach spray. (Why the cockroach version? This works on wasps and roaches; fly spray doesn't kill cockroaches very effectively at all. It's too weak. A direct hit of cockroach spray can zap a wasp in five seconds, which is far quicker than fly spray. It's the indirect hits you have to be careful of when the buzzing gets lower, the evil sting-with-wings circles haplessly, threatening to crash into you until you zap it yet again. And the room stinks of insect killer. I had weeks on end of this experience until finally the weather got too cold and I was sincerely hoping the entire colony had been wiped out. This seems now not to be the case. Hardly being an expert on the life-cycle of the common ("yellowjacket") wasp I looked this all up on Google and was told in late autumn new Queens emigrate from the colony setting up home elsewhere. The original Queen remains behind with most of the workers. All the workers die. Next spring she wakes (supposedly alone, according to "expert" sites) and sets about founding a new colony; chewing paper, laying new eggs, etc ... The old nest is always abandoned.

So why this plague of enormous wasps? They are not hornets. The European hornet is about the same size as these monsters but markedly brown-&-yellow in coloration whereas these are black-&-yellow. These look exactly the same as the wasps I had last autumn (I killed enough to know!) except they're nearly twice as big in some cases ...

What is the meaning of this plague?? Already I have killed two Queens in the last month. A third flew in during the day but fortunately left via my then-open window. Am I going to have five nests in buzzing distance of my bed come next autumn? Please no!!