Embracing the Buzz When Wasps Attack
If you are opposed to using chemical pesticides, you can try a more organic method of pest control. If you discover the nest in late summer or fall, remember that worker wasps do not live through the winter and don’ t reuse an old nest, so just waiting for a couple of good frosts will eventually kill the colony. Depending on where the nest is located, and how close it is to winter, it may make sense to just wait the wasps out.
The Benefits of Wasps
Wasps are an incredibly diverse species, ranging from yellowjackets to velvet ants( which aren’ t actually ants). They provide numerous ecological benefits, including pest control and essential pollination.
Wasps are elite predators and hunt other flying bugs like flies, as well as bugs like caterpillars and spiders. Wasps, both the ones that live and work together( social wasps) and the ones that live and work on their own( solitary wasps) offer benefits often overlooked due to the bad rap wasps have unfairly earned. In fact, solitary wasps are being introduced to farms as a form of biological pest control with great success.
In Oregon, for example, a parasitic wasp that preys upon a highly damaging fruit fly has been released by Oregon State University to assist with control of the pest, protecting one of Oregon’ s most profitable crops, blueberries, which brings about $ 190 million annually to the state’ s economy.
Parasitic wasps have specific insects they hunt, including notorious pests such as tomato worms and aphids. The wasps lay their eggs inside the host, often paralyzing them with venom or viruses, while their eggs grow and eventually hatch out of the host, killing it.
Social wasps, like hornets, paper wasps and yellowjackets, also provide pest control on a large scale. A study conducted in the United Kingdom estimated that social wasps capture about 31 million pounds( 14 million kilograms) of prey every year.
Wasps Contribute to Pollination
About 75 % of the crops we grow are dependent on pollination, and wasps are voracious pollinators. While their most commonly recognized pollination role lies in commercial fig and orchid pollination, many other wasp
species are also great pollinators.
Pollen wasps, which feed only on nectar and pollen, are key pollinators while social wasps are generalist pollinators, bringing pollen with them as they fly from flower to flower. In fact, some research has shown that both yellowjackets and paper wasps outperform honeybees as the planet’ s best pollinators, like the European beewolf and hairy flower wasp, which are equipped with more hair than typical wasps, increasing the transfer of pollen.
How to Stay Safe
Wasps have earned a nasty reputation for being easily provoked into attacking, often seemingly without provocation at all. When yellowjackets attack, they release an alarm pheromone that whips its nestmates into a frenzy— this is where the old wive’ s tale that wasps can smell fear comes from.
It generally takes somewhere around 1,500 stings to kill an adult, but children are more susceptible to the toxic venom because of their lower body weight. Vibrations near the nest, like a lawn mower or hedge clippers, can also trigger a defense response, so if you’ re working in the field and start to notice a few yellowjackets buzzing around, make haste, a nest is close by. If you end up being stung, leave the area quickly and seek shelter— don’ t swat at them, each single stinger marks you with a big bullseye for the other yellowjackets and they will swarm and sting until the threat is gone.
While the sight of a nest of thousands of critters that can inflict significant harm is unnerving, the presence of the nest is itself a sign the wasps are contributing to the health of the area, if they can be tolerated.
And remember, they’ ll likely be all gone by winter anyway.
20 AcreageLife July 2024 AcreageLife. com