I spent part of yesterday engaged in locating a yellow-jacket nest, in an overgrown courtyard. I'd been weeding it with a group of middle-school students, and two of them had gotten stung. After they left, I spent about an hour watching the pattern of the wasps, where they were flying. I cautiously trimmed back high grasses around a log, and would walk away for a few minutes when they started getting stirred up. Eventually I pushed the log over with a rake to reveal a beautiful paper hike the size of a softball, and an angry swarm of 100+ yellow-jackets.
I felt bad about having to take them out, but this was the wrong place for them. I felt that it was my responsibility, because I've participated over the last few years in converting this school courtyard from a barren desert of mulch into a rich native habitat, seething with life. We've tilled truckloads of compost into the clay soil, planted hundreds of native plants and trees, and imported rotting logs from other natural areas to colonize the area with ants and other insects and invertebrates. We have likely increased biodiversity in this courtyard by a factor of 10 or 100.
So it's my fault the wasps were there, and from their perspective, it was a fine place to be. In another scenario, we could have found a way to coexist, but not in a school. So while I flushed out this wasp nest with deep regret, it was also a very beautiful moment. Because I am enormously, amateurishly fascinated with Order Hymenoptera, "one of the largest orders of insects, comprising the sawflies, wasps, bees and ants. Over 130,000 species are recognized, with many more remaining to be described."