Britain’s Biggest Wasp Nest Found in Pub Loft

The pub is a country pub located in Southampton but has not been named probably as it would deter some customers from eating and drinking there but in the loft of the pub pest controllers found what was potentially the largest wasp’s nest ever found in Britain.

It measured six feet wide by five feet long and had a depth of around 5 foot it was home to around 500,000 wasps. 

It was discovered around the chimney stack and was destroyed by pest controller Sean Whelan using telescopic devices and pumped the nest full of insecticide. He simply put on his iPod and played “Bat Out Of Hell” and got on with the grizzly task.

Mr Whelan believes that the nest must have begun its construction last summer as nests like these are only built from May to September.

Wasps would normally crawl out of the ground where they would hibernate around May time and begin their construction of their nest before abandoning it around September. This particular one was so large it could not have possibly been started in May as it would take almost a year to accumulate to this size.

Britain’s very cold winter meant the pub would have kept the heating on practically throughout the usual hibernation season fooling many of the wasps thinking it was still summer so they may well have continued building.

Experts in entomology from Oxford University have confirmed it is indeed the largest one found in Britain or indeed anywhere in the world in the past 50 years. Back in 1960 a 12 ft x 6ft monster was found in New Zealand.