From booming, buzzing colonies to sad, solitary couples

It is a cool late August morning and a lot many hominids are having hasty breakfasts before catching onto the bandwagon of survival through the day. This little Indian yellow wasp, unfortunately maligned with a pinching adjective ‘stinging’, is not breakfasting on the dry bark of this dead Marwa plant.  With the unhurried ease of an artist, it’s scratching away little bark crumbs to use these in making its paper carton galleries to lay eggs and start the process of life from its end. In the slow-paced, unhurried smaller world, they use pollen crumbs and dead bark pieces to build their umbrella-shaped nesting hives, the little galleries to shelter eggs.
Well, it’s a sad tale from colonies to couple. Earlier, during the times when they stood a chance to stand, or when humankind wasn’t too imposing, they thrived in colonies and valiantly defended their citadels. The days are gone. Humankind’s heart has shrunk and his pest control arm has expanded well beyond his home and hearth. It now covers every nook corner of earth. So the colonies are out of question these days. All you have is just a wasp couple—he/she seen in the video and the partner taken flight to lay the foundation somewhere—sneaking like thieves and set up a little nest in some inaccessible part somewhere around overhangs, porches, eaves, attic corner, barn, porch shed, some abandoned ceiling, railings or door-frames. More than the artistry, it is about theft of temporarily stealing a little space somewhere. Just a tiny bulb of nest and a few eggs. All that is left of the maligned stinging nest. A little unbecoming projection at the risk of swatted out by the gentlest touch of a cobweb cleaner.
There will be many who feel like rapping my knuckles for speaking for the stinging wasps. Well, do they sting for pleasure? Let somebody come barging uninvited into your bedroom and then watch your own sting. Just because you hold man-made pares of the property doesn’t justify your sting, just like it doesn’t biggest wars for space and resources over earth.
Nature has a place for them. They pollinate flowers and control many insect species. Now don’t look at the insect species controlled by the wasps as the primary villains. They in turn must be controlling something else. In the two-way scheme of things, every species receives something in lieu of what it gives back. We have but turned the tables. We have re-calibrated the natural instinct to give back also. It’s a mad rush to take as much as possible, without willingness to give back anything. No wonder, we have raped mother earth. With newer and newer techniques to plunder resources, we are giving back long, long tragic tales of ecological degradation, extinction of species, wars, diseases, strife and unrest. Well, the list of our give-aways is endless on the negative side.