Richard Collins: Wasps don’t deserve the bad buzz
Do wasps become more aggressive from September onwards? With their queen preparing for hibernation, are they extra-protective of the colony? Food stocks might be running low. Hunger makes people bad-tempered; does it do the same to wasps? So, what’s the best way to avoid being stung?
Honeybee colonies survive the winter, wasp ones don’t. Come late autumn, a wasp queen deserts the slaves that served her throughout the summer. They die, while she seeks out a cool dry place in which to hibernate.
A folded curtain, or a wardrobe, might seem a suitable location for the big sleep but there may be a problem; she doesn’t like being disturbed. Drawing the blinds, or rummaging for a garment, a person risks being stung.
Honeybees are kamikazes; the barbed sting lodges in human skin and the abdomen is torn apart when she tries to withdraw it. Wasps can sting repeatedly.
A wasp queen awakes from hibernation in April. Nectar from early spring flowers soon restores her strength and she searches for somewhere to nest. Oddly, the site of a previous year is never reused. Most nests are located underground but the inside of a garden shed, or the space beneath a roof and ceiling, are suitable alternatives.
Strips, scraped from wooden fences telegraph poles or dead tree barks, serve as construction materials. Chewed into soft balls of pulp between her powerful jaws, they are carried to the building site. A wasp’s nest, made of this dried-out ‘paper’, is a most elegant structure.
The queen then deposits eggs, each into its own cell-like pod. She will have been fertilised during mating flights the previous autumn and the eggs she lays at this early stage are fertilised. They hatch into larvae which she feeds on the bodies of insects cut into pieces. In due course worker wasps, all sisters, emerge and take over the chores of the colony.
The queen now devotes herself solely to egg-laying. She may produce up to 25,000 in a season.
The workers will defend the nest against intruders, responding to any threat en mass. A person disturbing a nest, deliberately or accidentally, will be attacked mercilessly.
In due course male wasps — drones — hatch from unfertilised eggs. Unlike their sisters, they don’t have stings, nor do they work. New queens will now be developing within the colony.
Wasps don’t swarm the way honeybees do, but the queens, including the old one, as well as the drones, fly out and mate. The drones die, the queens hibernate and the cycle begins again.
Contrary to popular belief wasps, according to the entomologists, are no more aggressive than bees; it’s just that they like the foods we like.
Smells lure them to our barbecues and picnic tables. The main attraction for them is sugar, which is odourless, but our smelly foods are likely to contain it. Even tiny traces of food on your clothes may be enough to entice a wasp to approach. What happens next depends on you.
Provided she is not in the immediate vicinity of her colony, a wasp will sting only in self-defence so, when one lands on you, be still.
The intruder will depart in her own good time. Don’t try to brush her off and be careful not to get her entangled in you clothing.
Nor will other wasps join in the fray if you happen to provoke one individual.
