Tenants in the garden

We have a number of Tamarack trees in our yard. They look like spruce trees but they are not conifers. Their leaves look like the needles of a spruce tree. Like all leaf trees they lose their leaves in the Fall and become bare. People who don't know this assume these trees are dead, but they are not. The leaves come back in the Spring. This last fall I discovered a huge wasp nest in one of the trees. It must have been there for some time already. I can't believe the wasps could build a huge nest like this in just one Summer. The nest looks abandoned and I hope it is. We used to have lots of wasps in the yard, but last year only a few. I find wasps interesting. Bees too. I wrote about giant bees in my SF trilogy Lizard World. They lived in their hives under huge mushroom trees. Anyone who read the books will know this. If you haven't read them yet, do so. Here is a picture of the nest.