Wasps - Vespidae

Stinging menaces

Wasps. Just saying the name can cause many people to freak out especially when you tell them that there is one flying around them. This fear is due to wasps having a stinger in the rear end of their abdomen that quite often winds up finding its way into an unlucky victims skin giving the perception that wasps are menacing and show no hesitation when it comes to stinging. Whilst it is true that they can sting and that the sting isn’t very nice and causes localised pain, that’s length is determined by the species, it is not fair to catagorise them all as menacing monsters that only exist to sting us and cause us pain.

Wasps are a group of insects from the order Hymenoptera, which includes ant and bees, and have over 100,000 species across the world. When we talk about wasps we almost instantaneously jump to pictures of black and yellow striped bums with menacing faces and a long stinger with their wings held back walking across our sweet smelling food, but of the wasps here in the UK only 6 six share this common look:

-          Common Wasp, Vespula vulgaris

-          German Wasp, Vespula germanica

-          Red wasp, Vespula rufa

-          Tree wasp, Dolichovespula sylvestris

-          Median wasp, Dolichovespula media

-          Hornet, Vespa crabro

Vespidae and the life cycle

All 6 of these bear very similar resemblances as they all belong to the family Vespidae which are known as the social wasps and it is these wasps that are responsible for many of the stings that people receive. Whilst many other wasps are able to sting us they tend not to and that is because our habitats do not clash with theirs so we stay away from them and them us. Unfortunately this is different with the vespid wasps which frequently build their nests in and around homes, leading us to come into contact with them.

The nests that the wasps commonly build in and around our house are made of a papery substance that they make by chewing wood into a mulch. The queen first starts making this nest at the start of spring usually around the end of March and start of April but with the warmer weather that is occurring because of global warming they can be seen whizzing around as early as February. These nests are commonly made inside walls, sheds, air bricks and any places inside that have an entrance from the outside, but they can also make them underground in disused burrows or in trees. The nest that is first made is rather small and has enough space for 10 – 20 young grubs that live inside a honeycomb like structure. The first grubs to pupate and become adults are female workers and upon them becoming adults the queen will no longer leave the nest and will live out the rest of her days laying eggs. The workers help to collect food and raise the new young and this keeps happening until around August when autumn is approaching and the next generation of queens needs to mate. In order for this to happen the queen will start to lay eggs that will become males and females that can potentially become queens which all fly off to mate; this also means that no new workers are being made and so the nest begins to die and by September most nests have ended. The males then proceed to die after mating and the newly fertalised queens go and hibernate for the winter ready to start a new colony next year. These new queens will try to find warm places to hibernate inside walls and also underground in peoples gardens.

Protection

Understnading this life cyle is a good starting point in preventing yourself from getting stung. During the wasps main season during the early summer months the number of individuals in a nest can reach into the tens of thousands which is a lot of stings. So here are a few ways to avoid getting stung:

-          Wasps like to live near houses and so where possible you just need to stay away from the nest

-          As I said before, wasps aren’t out there actively looking to sting us, they only sting when they feel threatened or feel their nest is under threat. Therefore if we just leave them alone then they shouldn’t bother you.

-          Next point is to not step on or squash any wasps. Details as to why are found in the next section.

-          During the hibernation season be careful when gardening and doing DIY as you may accidentally come across a queen who is hibernating.

-          Wasps are attracted to sweet smells during the late summer as flowers start to die of and they have to find replacements for nectar, so try to hide sweet smelling things.

-          Lastly if you find that you do need to get rid of a nest (for health and safety from allergies or it’s stopping you from completing a task) then there are companies that can remove them quick and safely. I do however, only recommend this if it is an absolute necessity.

Following this should keep you out of “stings” way. I’d also like to point out that I am 24 at the time of writing this and I have only ever been stung by a wasp once so it doesn’t happen all that often.

What good are wasps?

A question I get asked a lot in my line of work is “What is the point in wasps? They don’t actually do anything”. This statement couldn’t be further from the truth and wasps are of huge benefits to mankind and the way in which we live. Wasps on the most part are carnivorous for at least one stage of their lives and so they are a key species involved in pest controls eating many harmful grubs and flies that cost the agricultural industry thousands each year. The social wasps will also eat nectar for energy and as such they have to enter flowers and get covered in pollen making them great pollinators. Along with eating nectar the social wasps also eat dead animals of which most are dead invertebrates which they eat a lot of and are one of the most important decomposers; without which we would beup to necks in dead invertebrates.

Another question I get asked a lot at work is “Is it alright for me to just squash the wasps when I see them?” Asides from all of the good they do us it is still a very bad idea to squash one of the social wasps. This is because when one of the social wasps is squashed it exudes a pheromone that attracts all of its kin to investigate what the problem it which has evolved as a way for wasps to source out danger so they can avoid it. Unfortunately, of you have squashed a wasp then you are now seen as the potential danger and the reaction for that is for the investigating wasps to sting you to get rid of the danger. At this point you could try to squash more, but each one squashed increases the pheromone levels and will likely end up in you being perceived as a bigger threat that needs more stings to be dealt with.

So in summary Wasps aren’t stinging machines and it is possible for us to co-exist without the need to wipe them out. They are also very beneficial to us and that is why we need to protect them and make sure that we don’t cause any declines in their species and remember it’s easy to be a force for change by simply choosing to not kill them.

Heyze