Wasps don't like marmalade

Today I continued my "Marie Kondo" transformation of our garden shed.

At some point in its history the previous owner had installed a central partition in the back half of the space we use as our garden shed. Now the shed is only about 8' wide, so the back half had been split in to two narrow spaces that were difficult to use for storage and to access.  We think they may have used them as bunkers for logs and kindling, but there are far better spaces on the property to store firewood. It is probably best that I don't waste any more time trying to make sense of this ... the previous owners just did some really odd things.

Anyway, back to the partition. I was home alone today,* and my plan was to remove the partition. I had given it a brief inspection and it seemed to be held in place with a multitude of screws and coach bolts. I had a suspicion that I might need an angle grinder for the floor fixings, but there was nothing that seemed overly complicated.

Fortunately my half-arsed assessment was correct and I needed nothing more than an impact driver and a half inch socket to remove the majority of the fixings. I soon had the top half of the partition unscrewed, removed and stacked in the car port.** 

The lower half of the partition was more firmly fixed at the rear of the shed. This gave me an excuse to deploy my reciprocating saw to hack through the ½" boards, and cut the rear section free. With that removed, I was able to move on to the final phase, which was to remove the oddments*** of sheet material that had been used to clad the rear wall of the shed.

All was going well until I moved on to the final piece of MDF. As I was removing the screws holding it to the back wall of the shed I managed to get stung by a wasp. It was only a minor sting and I carried on, unaware of this portent. 

The final screw was removed and the final sheet was tugged away from the wall. As it dropped to the floor I found myself "face to face" with a wasp nest, and its inhabitants were not amused by the disturbance.

My tactical retreat was immediate and rapid ... I added "buy wasp nest killer" to my virtual shopping list, and left the job for another day.

Whilst on the subject of wasps, a couple of days ago I mentioned that my hives have been pestered by wasps, and that I had set up some wasp traps in the orchard. A couple of the traps had been baited with watered down raspberry jam and had been very successful. I then made up a couple of traps using old 2 litre plastic bottles. These had been baited with some old marmalade, that had been kicking around in the kitchen, and had been nowhere near as good at trapping wasps.

During my shed clearing activities I had come across a container with some sugar syrup that had been left over from feeding my bees. I decided to add this to my wasp traps and was amazed at the result. Within a few hours the traps were buzzing with trapped wasps.

Clearly wasps don't like marmalade.

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* 30% and her "crew" had, strangely, decided that they should take a trip to Bletchley Park. I say "strangely" because Alan Turing and decryption of Nazi Germany codes are two subject that I would never expect to be discussed by my dear wife.

** I am, as yet, undecided whether to try to recycle the timber or just burn the damned thing!

*** A piece of blockboard, and a few pieces of MDF that had been badly affected by damp ... yet another bodge job!