That's what you call a sting operation: Police seal off house on holiday island after seven metre wasps nest found
- The nest was reportedly found at a property on the island of Tenerife
- It is said to have been 22ft long and covered nearly an entire room
- Experts believe wasps migrating from Africa may have created it
By STEVE NOLAN PUBLISHED: 12:36 GMT, 12 April 2013 | UPDATED: 14:23 GMT, 12 April 2013
Police sting: A seven metre wasp nest was found by police at an empty house on the island of Tenerife
A seven metre long wasps nest has reportedly been discovered in an abandoned house by police officers in Spain. Officers were called to the empty property in San Sebastian de La Gomera on the island of Tenerife after a series of calls from concerned neighbours.Police sealed off the home when the found the 22ft nest, which is said to have almost filled a room, and millions of wasps in the house, according to UPI.com.
Experts believe that the nest was built by an African species of wasp which had migrated to Tenerife.The Canary Islands are located around 100km from the African coast.Police are said to be trying to find out who the property belongs to.
The nest may well be the biggest ever found.According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest one found to date was discovered in Waimaukau in New Zealand in April 1963 and was an impressive 3.7metres, or 12ft 2ins long, more than 5ft in diameter and 18ft in circumference.Thought to have been created by German wasps, that nest was so heavy that it fell from the tree it was hanging in and broke in two.
The size, type and colour of a wasps nest depends on the species of wasp that builds it.They tend to be predominantly made from paper pulp - the wasp gathers wood fibres from weathered wood and softens it by chewing and mixing with saliva.The previous biggest nest in the last 50 years was discovered in the attic of a pub in Southampton, Hampshire, in 2010.
Measuring 6ft by 5ft the nest was home to an estimated 500,000 wasps.Another giant nest was found at the Avery Garden Centre in Taunton, Somerset last summer.The average common wasp nest contains around 4,000 to 5,000 wasps - but colonies have been known to reach populations of 20,000.
Extraordinary: Experts believe that the huge nest is too big to have been built by common wasps (pictured) and is most likely to have been the creation of a species of migrant wasps from Africa
