Dealing with a wasp's nest on the balcony

This thing appeared a couple of weeks ago and at first I thought it was a butterfly sitting on the metal support on the balcony. At closer inspection it turned out to be a wasp's nest. For those two weeks there has almost always been a brown wasp in attendance, sitting protectively on the top of this little nest, or on its front facing into my living room.

But for the past two days I haven't seen the wasp anywhere. At times over the past two weeks I would look out from my living room and the wasp would not be there but it always returned to sit on the nest in its own familiar way. Now it is gone.

Two days ago I phoned the pest controllers and they are due to come out tomorrow to deal with this pest for me, but now it looks like the thing has gone away for good. I don't think any babies have been born from this nest. It has always only ever been the one adult, alone, looking after things. There have not been swarms of little wasps to terrify me even more.

The problem is that I am such a physical coward that something like a wasp's nest sets me off into absolute paroxysms of stupefied panic. I had absolutely no idea what to do when I first saw the thing, then I waited until the weekend finished before making the phone call to the pest controllers. We'll see what they say when they get here tomorrow morning. They'll probably laugh at me and say something like, "It's been too hot for wasps up this high recently, this one will have abandoned the nest." I'll still pay their fee, for sure.