Wasps and hornets all have a role to play in the garden
WILDLIFE
Lazy September afternoons, blackberries in the hedgerows, apples covering the trees… and if you’re unlucky, a nasty sting from a drunken wasp while you pick the fruit.
Common wasp are known as ‘jaspers’ in some parts of England
Bees are revered for their usefulness, giving us honey and beeswax. But wasps, people often say, what good are they? A pest that will send you indoors or give you a nasty sting.
But every creature is part of a natural cycle, and wasps do serve a purpose to gardeners. They quickly catch insects with their sting, following it up by laying an egg for the larvae to eat a ready meal.
They are the solitary wasps, and they don’t bother anyone at all. There are 250 species of wasps in the British Isles alone, plus some known as ichneumon wasps, but most of them are harmless to humans.
Facts about wasps and hornets
they want an insect to eat, not you
inside, getting ‘tipsy’ on the fruit
The social wasps are the ones that cause the stings – the Common Wasp (Vespula vulgaris) and the German Wasp (Vespula germanica) are the best known.
The German is 2.2cm long, with a yellow and black face, black eyes and antennae and on its head, three small dots between the eyes, yellow legs and yellow abdomen banded and spotted with black. They have two narrow pairs of wings.
The Common Wasp is very similar, but lacks the three black spots on the head and on the back. They are known as ‘jaspers’ in some parts of England, perhaps a version of their Latin name, or because of their similar striped colouring to the mineral jasper.
They make papery nests out of chewed, rotten wood that can be the size of a football.
The nests can be found in woodland and you may come across one (and leave well alone).
They have similar colonies to honeybees, with a single queen and a large workforce of daughters. Worker wasps catch insects, unlike bees, but the adults also drink sugary liquids, usually nectar.
It’s when they get drunk on rotting windfall apples, pears and other fruits that they become a nuisance and you need to be careful.
Hornets – just a big wasp?
More like a small helicopter, but their drone can be a sign to duck for cover, and they are so slow and lumbering that it is easy to get out of their way. You even have more time than with a small wasp to get the glass and piece of card underneath and let them out into the garden (to come in again?)
The hornet (Vespa crabra) is our largest wasp at more than 3cms long.
With its large yellow face, big dark eyes, sturdy antennae and bright yellow and brown bands over the two distinct body sections, and its two pairs of narrow wings that hook together in flight, it can both frighten and fascinate.
The hornet (Vespa crabra) is our largest wasp at more than 3cms long, but rarely stings humans, however menacing it looks, although as a social wasp living in a colony, it can sting. It likes to live in old woodland.
Like other social wasps, the queen hibernates and emerges in spring to make a papery chambered nest from chewed wood, in a sheltered spot such as a hollow in an old tree.
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Country Gardener
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