Seen in Varen today
These are not wasps. The only wasp to survive the winter is the queen which hibernates solitarily (although one nest can produce several hibernating queens) and then emerges in the spring when the weather is warmer and there is some food around and starts to look for a new site, build a new nest and produce some offspring. The only time there might be a wasp "swarm" is later in the season if an established nest is disturbed and they might come out in a fairly aggressive group. On the other hand bees, which survive the winter as a colony, often swarm after the first few weeks of warm weather, i.e now in Varen after all the mild weather, as the nest (or hive) gets overcrowded. New queens are produced and the original queen leaves the nest with a large group of worker bees which swarm around for a short time and then suddenly settle somewhere (which you observed), usually in a tree quite close by, before eventually (a few hours to a couple of days) relocating to a new nest site which they have identified. These swarms are not aggressive and rarely sting you. If they are honey bees, a local beekeeper would be interested to capture the swarm, which can usually only be done at the intermediate stage when the swarm has settled in a tree. If they are wild bees, just leave them to it. In your case if they are not from a neighbour's honey bee hives, they are probably wild bees with a colony based in an old tree or in someone's roof. (p.s. Although I never took it up, my father was a beekeeper as well as both my brothers, my middle brother having been a commercial beekeeper in Canada with over 100 hives) 🙂
