Wasp Nest on Lightbulb: Observations

I found a wasp nest on a lightbulb. That gave me an idea!

I turned the light on at night.

They somehow pick up the nest and rotate it around from the side of the bulb to the front. Less light maybe?

I turn off the light.

They moved the nest back to its original position.


This is interesting, I wonder how they move the nest and how far they would move it to avoid light/heat at night.


I repeated this a few more times at different times of day/night with the same result but never observed how they moved the nest.
(I don't much care for staring at lightbulbs or standing under wasp nests any longer than I have to).

The wasp nests that I see are attached by a single strand of paper. I wonder if the heat from the light bulb is drying out part of that paper and making it twist to the side on it's own? Kind of like a weather stick.

It sure seems to me that the nest would be too heavy for a wasp to detach and reattach by itself.

How does it travel back to its original position then? It appears to move up sometimes too. It's quite odd.

Maybe they can vibrate it to move...

I should have got a timelapse, a windstorm broke the light the other day though so I removed the nest from the bulb. Now that I think of it I'm surprised that the nest didn't blow off.