A large wasp nest dug out of a paddock on Ian Allerby's Ruahihi Road farm has been donated to Kaimai School.

'I would like to see someone preserve it,” says Ian. 'The majority of people would never ever see anything like it.”

Ian Allerby with the wasp nest. Photo: Tracy Hardy.

Ian and neighbour Colin Read spent several hours digging the nest out this week after Ian poisoned the residents.

'You should see the size of the hole we had to dig, we had to shift a hell of a lot of dirt to get round it without damaging it too much,” says Ian.

'It was way down in the ground and they had another big hole behind it, preparing for the next expansion of it, you know.”

Ian discovered the nest when he was weed spraying on the back paddock of his Ruahihi Road farm.

'I could hear all this humming, I thought it was a swarm of bees going over. I turned round, had a look. Then I heard it down in the ground, and I saw all these wasps. It was just like a beehive – they were coming in and out, just a colossal number of wasps coming in and out.

'The hole in the ground would have been a good six to eight inches across. The biggest hole I have seen in the ground would be a couple of inches at the most. This was massive, eh. Most people I have been talking to reckon it's been there at least 10 years.”

Ian went down at dusk when the wasps were all inside, and puffed insecticide into the hole.

'I just puffed away there until I see the smoke was starting to come back out, and I went down the next day and she was very quiet,” says Ian.

'They started to liven up a wee bit, and I just went back down during the day to give it another puff, and that was it.”