Author Topic: Wasps (Read 3511 times)

Wowbagger · « **on:** 17 September, 2014, 12:37:32 am »

A post on the "Seen today" thread prompted me to start this one, as I have been wondering what has happened to all the wasps. I've hardly seen any this year. I wonder if the warm, wet winter persuaded many of the queens from their hibernation too soon and they were unable to sustain their colonies?

Kim · « **Reply #1 on:** 17 September, 2014, 12:42:34 am »

Good point. Don't think I've had to evict a single wasp this year (we usually get loads sneaking in around the window frames). I remember being pestered by them a bit back in May, but haven't really seen many since. Barakta's underwear drawer remains uninvaded.

Maybe the giant hairy spiders / spanish superslugs / rats / etc. ate them?

hellymedic · « **Reply #2 on:** 17 September, 2014, 01:07:18 am »

I think I heard something on the radio about their numbers being down but they are expected to recover PDQ unlike the bees.

Wobbly John · « **Reply #3 on:** 17 September, 2014, 02:14:50 am »

They're all in the feckin Fens.

Half a dozen crawlled into the staff changing room yesterday while I showered.

They be Rentokillerized now, though.

nikki · « **Reply #4 on:** 17 September, 2014, 07:55:14 am »

The ones that aren't in the Fens are in my bedroom wall.

bumper · « **Reply #5 on:** 17 September, 2014, 08:18:22 am »

They're all in my garden, munching away on my shed and fence. There's always a chewing noise present, they've put thousands of little tracks on the wood where they've eaten them away.

Crumbling Nick · « **Reply #6 on:** 17 September, 2014, 09:49:38 pm »

Numbers when we've eaten in the garden have been similar to those in previous years. However they arrived & became a nuisance much earlier than usual: July rather than August.

woollypigs · « **Reply #7 on:** 17 September, 2014, 09:56:39 pm »

You might be right, because we had very big wasp buzzing around, way back in Feb/march, in our shop. I think I might have seen one or two since.

Wowbagger · « **Reply #8 on:** 18 September, 2014, 09:56:32 am »

I saw one this morning here in Maidstone.

Regulator · « **Reply #9 on:** 18 September, 2014, 06:11:45 pm »

Very few in Shropshire - absolutely loads in Cambridgeshire...

Wowbagger · « **Reply #10 on:** 18 September, 2014, 06:27:29 pm »

I don't know enough about wasps' behaviour to be sure, but it seems to me that they probably don't fly all that far from their nests. We were taught that honey bees have a range of about 1.5 miles, unless they live in steep-sided valleys, in which case it might be more - they generally don't fly over high hills if it involves a climb so if a beekeeper is after moorland heather it's a good idea to put the hive as close as possible to the forage plant.

Wasps are carnivores mostly and their colonies are much smaller than a healthy honey bees' colony. I have always gained the impression that they are generally weaker insects (no scientific evidence to back this up, just my own observations) so I would imagine that their range is a lot smaller. I suspect that if there's a wasps' nest close to your house they are likely to be a damned nuisance and you gain the impression that it's a bad wasp summer. If there are no nests nearby, you just don't see them and wonder where they all are this year.

hellymedic · « **Reply #11 on:** 18 September, 2014, 10:02:34 pm »

They make a 'beeline' for our Victoria plums. These have been over-pruned this year so we've had neither plums nor wasps.

Wowbagger · « **Reply #12 on:** 18 September, 2014, 10:37:23 pm »

The wasp grubs are carnivorous. The adult wasps hunt suitable food. I once saw one hawk and then dissect a hover fly. Presumably the juicy bits of the butchered carcass was to be used as baby food.

As long as there are grubs in the cells, the adults' chief source of food is their excreta, which is full of sugar, apparently. The trouble is the queen wasps go off lay in about July. No more eggs = no more grubs = no more larva shit so the adults survive by scavenging anything sweet and sticky. That's why they tend to be a nuisance in the late summer and autumn.

bumper · « **Reply #13 on:** 18 September, 2014, 10:51:18 pm »

If pushed, they'll raid spider webs too and love ivy this time of year. They do an excellent job of clearing sawfly caterpillars from my garden

I've got a photo of a wasp hanging upside down eating a hoverfly somewhere in my flickr pics.

Wowbagger · « **Reply #14 on:** 20 September, 2014, 08:08:14 am »

We are staying at a B & B in Swanton Morley, Norfolk. Last night I killed. Wasp in our room and dispsed of the body. This morning, another. We haven't even got a window open.

hellymedic · « **Reply #15 on:** 20 September, 2014, 12:21:35 pm »

Methinks there's a wasps' nest hidden within the building of yer B&B.

Sergeant Pluck · « **Reply #16 on:** 20 September, 2014, 06:14:20 pm »

Quote from: bumper on 18 September, 2014, 10:51:18 pm

If pushed, they'll raid spider webs too and love ivy this time of year. ]

We have a lot of BIG spiders in our little garden. The one pictured below hangs out in the ivy, and its preferred food seems to be wasps, which do indeed fly about close to the ivy.

I must try to take a photo that conveys the scale of this beast. Its body is enormous - could it be a pregnant female? It has a great web strung between the ivy and the stakes that hold my tomato plants. I’ve noticed that it doesn’t bother with smaller flies, it just leaves them in the web and presumably they become snacks. When a wasp gets caught - and I’ve seen it catch at least 6 over the past couple of weeks - it launches itself out of the ivy, grapples with the wasp for 5 seconds, wraps it up in web, and then buggers off into the ivy to wait for it to die. Then it comes and retrieves its meal.

The body on this thing is about 3 or 4 times the size of a wasp.

This is not the biggest spider in our garden, although it has the biggest body. The biggest overall tends to wander about, and is about 6 cm across! Including the legs, of course. I think it is of the genus Tegenaria. It’s an evil looking b’stard. I’m not sure, but sometimes I think it is stalking the above garden spider.

Edited to add: some of you might find that clicking on the above photos makes tem marginally bigger.

Arellcat · « **Reply #17 on:** 24 November, 2015, 10:47:30 am »

There was a lot of activity over the spring and summer months here, with hundreds of wasps going in and out of a long thin gap between the wooden boards above the window. Unfortunately the bit of roof above the window is getting modified and the builder was petrified by the wasps and wouldn't go near them, even when I offered him a beekeeping jacket. I tried to buy more time for the colony to hatch fully and move out, but my landlord wasn't for waiting and the pest control man was called to make it all safe.

That was weeks ago. The actual work didn't start until this week, so I was able to grab my camera.

This is what the wasps had been working their little hearts out to build:

which the builder carefully extracted for me to study, photograph and put in a box for safekeeping:

It really is a thing of beauty, and incredibly fragile. There is even still a grub in one of the starter cells in the small nest. Whatever Mr Anti Pesto used, it killed everything stone dead. On the bright side, this will have reduced the competition between queen wasps for nesting sites next spring, so there may be a strong colony again.

DDCyclist · « **Reply #18 on:** 24 November, 2015, 11:27:51 am »

Do wasps like Marmite? $:-\$

We usually get loads of them, but this year not so many. We often get a couple of big hornets in the house but, this year, got none.

Arellcat · « **Reply #19 on:** 24 November, 2015, 04:52:50 pm »

I doubt wasps are even ambivalent about Marmite. The jar is there for scale, and because Marmite.

spesh · « **Reply #20 on:** 28 November, 2015, 09:28:39 pm »

The anatomy of a wasp: http://i.imgur.com/SIk05.png