Last winter I had a group of paper wasps that overwintered underneath the lip of a plant pot in a group called a hibernaculum. From what I could tell, there were about 30 of them that all huddled up in that sheltered area and shared warmth. We had a couple of chilly nights and I wondered how they would survive, but they did fine. When spring came, they came out of hibernation and headed out to start their own colonies. You see, each one of those wasps was a potential queen with the mission of establishing new colonies in the spring. I really like the paper wasps because they build really cool nests of plant material and saliva and they are nonaggressive. I had hoped that at least a couple of the girls would stick around, and it looks like one did! I found her hard at it last weekend, and the nest has grown significantly since then. It shouldn’t be long now before we start seeing some workers out and about, giving the queen time to lay more eggs and build the colony numbers.