64. In Praise of Wasps.

Dearly Beloved,

It was a bad moment when I typed the word “wasp” into the Google search engine, and the first suggestion was “Wasps, how to be rid of them”. Wasps have a special place in the splendour of creation because of their diversity. There are hundreds of thousands of species. Some are social but most are solitary and many of those are parasitic. Some build nests of mud to house their larvae.

The first experience of a wasp, for most of us, is of an insect, nibbling with quiet enthusiasm as it busies itself on a jam sandwich we are about to put into our mouths. Our familiar wasps are unusual in being a sociable creatures. The workers we see are female and genetically identical to each other and the queen. Workers are incapable of reproduction apparently because of exposure to pheromones produced by the reproductively active queen wasp.

Our children were brought up to be aware of wasps at meal times but to tolerate them. Wasps love cooked chicken and we provide a small piece and watch the creature carve off a square with its small mandibles and pick it up and fly off to its nest. They normally return five or ten minutes later for a second helping. We have only had people stung at table when one of the diners is a wasp flapper. That disorientates and disturbs the wasp making it more likely to sting people.

Most wasps are solitary and many are parasitic on particular species of insects or spiders. Relatively few are black and yellow like the wasps that are common in England. Some have a long ovipositor which has evolved to place its eggs into some hapless caterpillar or grub. Sand wasps even manage to paralyse the caterpillar, dig a hole and bury it. Ichneumid parasitic wasps play a major part in the regulation of the numbers of other insects like butterflies and moths. Some wasps have a surprising choice of prey, one very large wasp found in Brazil parasitises tarantula spiders. Wasp species encompass both the largest and the smallest of insects.

My first realisation of how special these animals were was when I shared water holes with them in the desert mountains of Oman. The waterholes hummed with the activity of wasps and hornets and they formed close ranks as they drank on the water edge. As far as they were concerned a human being was just another creature desperate for water. After drinking, the large brown and yellow striped hornets would take off with a huge, energetic noise of buzzing as they rose slowly in the air like some miniature heavy-lift transport aircraft to return to their nest, heavy with their life sustaining cargo of water.

We once had a hornet's nest close to our dining table outside in the garden but the hornets ignored us as they flew past. One year we also had a wasp nest in a hole over the front door of our house. The wasps took no notice of the comings and goings of the household for three months until one day a relative, passed through the door and immediately he was stung by the guard wasp on duty. That, he told us, is his regular experience with both wasps and hornets. Now, before his visits we review the wasp and hornet nests in the vicinity and keep him well away from them.

No man has the intelligence, imagination and creativity to conceive of all the diversity and complexity to be found amongst wasps and much work must be done before this wondrous group of animals can be finally, fully appreciated.

Peace,

Paul.


Photo: Paul Munton.
Can you find nine wasps, two flies and a hunting spider on this flowering fennel plant growing in a garden in France? Click to enlarge.






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