At my office (which is in an old "resurbished" castle in the middle of nature), there's a species of wasps around.
They vary from 2 - 3 centimeters in body length, maybe 4 in the largest ones and I would love to do some close ups of them. Unfortunately they are extremely aggressive and defensive. If I come within 2 meters of them, they start buzzing around my head and are quite threatening.
Normally I wouldn't hesitate to stick around a bit and wait for them to settle down but when I do that with these guys, they just leave.
I'm wondering if there's any special approach to these. They do have one tree they usually like to sit on (in fact, a very nice few hundred year-old sequoia that leaks some sap that they seem to like). I don't know where their nest is, but I pity the fool who comes close to that... Sometimes one sneaks into the building, but even there they are really defensive against anyone who comes close.
Unfortunately I'm limited to using a 100mm macro, so I do have to get relatively close to get a good shot.
Any tips on how to get close to them? Set a lure and draw them out of their element?
The only one I was able to photograph was when I accidentally found one sitting on a cold leaf a few years ago, and I shot it with my old lumix compact LZ8. At first I thought it was a queen - due to the size, but there can only be so many queens and I've seen dozens.
This is the shot with my compact:
