As soon as you want to enjoy ice cream or cake outdoors in summer, you can already hear them humming. Sweet drinks and even bread or hot dishes are popular with the black and yellow striped insects. Wasps can make life really difficult in late summer. Fear of being stung, many people lash out as soon as a wasp appears. But have wasps actually deserved their bad reputation? What can you do if you are harassed by them? Learn more about the unpopular, but actually useful, insects.
You can’t get rid of the feeling that wasps like sweets as much as many of us. But that’s not entirely true. Strictly speaking, there are only two species of wasp that are really attracted to sweet foods: the German wasp and the common wasp. In total, however, there are more than 500 species of wasps in the world. Only these two species are responsible for the fact that wasps are considered to be the sweet tooth and nuisance that spoil the beautiful summer time . Since many people are afraid of wasps and do not want to do without their candy outdoors, they set traps in their gardens or they smoke their nests out.
Wasps are not only worth protecting, they are also useful helpers. They fight unpleasant pests in the garden naturally and even pollinate some flowering plants. The bad reputation of wasps is partly due to the fact that they disturb us when we eat and drink outdoors. On the other hand, it is also because, unlike bees , they are not vegetarians. The offspring of the wasps in particular need protein-rich food and the larvae are therefore fed with chewed insects . Furthermore, wasps can sting multiple times and use their sting faster than bees, which only sting in great danger and then die.
Why are the two most famous species of wasps so crazy about sweets? The adults among the wasps need sugar as a source of energy. When the offspring are big enough in autumn , the young queens have to consume a lot of sugar in order to survive the winter . Therefore, the wasps must gather enough food for their queen. The wasp queens are the only ones of their kind that last winter until next springwill survive. They are therefore responsible for the continued existence of the wasps – if they die, there are no offspring. But her time is also limited, because in the new year a young queen will take over her job and the old wasp queen will die just like the workers when autumn comes. In order to take care of the queens, the workers have to work hard. Therefore, they have to find energy-rich food for themselves, such as sugar, in order to keep their flight muscles active until autumn falls.
What does a wasp look like?
The wasp species can be distinguished from the head drawing. While the German wasp (picture) has one or more black dots on its head, the common wasp has a broad line that becomes thicker downwards.
SecretDisc, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Besides wasps, bees and ants also belong to the order of hymenoptera. The insects got the name because of the four membranous wings. The wasp has strong black and yellow stripes – unlike bees, which are more black and brown in color. In addition, the bee has a more plump build and not the conspicuously narrow waist of the wasps. Bees are also generally more hairy than wasps and often have real fur.
All wasps have a body that is divided into three sections, which also ensures the typical wasp waist. The eyes are so-called compound eyes, so they are made up of many small parts. First of all, the different wasp species are divided into three groups: the plant wasps, the parasitic wasps and the voices. The first group has neither a sting nor a pronounced wasp waist, parasitic wasps are usually quite slim and the stinging voices got their name thanks to the sting. They include the real wasp and the common wasp, but also the bee.
So not all wasps look the same. How do you distinguish a common wasp from a German wasp? Both species belong to the short-headed wasps, which are characterized by a short head with a small distance between the upper jaw and the lower edge of the eye. However, their head drawings are different. The German Wasp has one to three black spots on its head. The common wasp, on the other hand, has a broad, black line that thickens towards the bottom. The queen of the common wasp can even grow up to 20 millimeters, the workers reach a maximum of 14 millimeters. The hornet is also easy to spot, it also belongs to the wasp family. It is much larger than the other species of wasp and has a reddish color on the head and rear.
Life in a strictly organized state
Wasps can also build underground nests, such as the common wasps in this photo, whose workers are expanding their burrows.
Soebe, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Wasps live in a state consisting of many insect colonies that are only active when it is nice and warm outside. When the queen wakes up from her winter rigor in spring – usually in May – she immediately begins busy building the nest. At first she is all alone and has to work hard: she has to finish and furnish the building and then raise her offspring. In each cell of the newly built nest, she lays an egg from which larvae develop. The eggs are fertilized by the queen herself, who still has sperm stores from last autumn stored in a seed pouch, which came from mating with a male wasp. It feeds its larvae with a pulp of chewed insects and in turn feeds on the sugary liquid that the larvae secrete.
In order to breed the workers who help organize the wasp state, the queen secretes “pheromones” – special messenger substances – which cause sterile females to develop from the larvae. Later on, the tasks in the wasp state are precisely distributed: some wasps are responsible for building the nest, others have to guard it or procure food for the larvae. The queen no longer leaves the nest and only takes over the egg-laying. The male wasps – they are called “drones” like bumblebees and bees – are not used until late summer. They only have a short life and their job is to mate with the queen.
DISPLAY
If you take a closer look at a wasp’s nest, you are pretty amazed at how well thought out and stable it is. It is like a huge house with many apartments, which in wasps are made of chewed wood and parts of plants and hold together with the help of their special saliva. During the summer the nest gets bigger and bigger and thousands of residents live here. In autumn it will be pretty quiet in and around the nest, because now all wasps will die except for the new queen, who will take over the old queen’s job next year. The abandoned burrow is not moved into again, but the queens build a new nest every year.
Wasp plague – what to do?
Wasps can make life really difficult, especially in late summer. It is important to keep calm, because then wasps are sometimes annoying, but mostly peaceful.
- Großmann / pixelio.de
When wasps try to get hold of some of our food or drink, many people shoo them away with waving movements and occasional screeching. Some not only try to chase the wasps away, but even want to kill them. The wasps then feel attacked and in many cases become aggressive. In most cases, they just want to get some of our goodies and don’t care about us humans at all. However, they perceive the hectic movements as a threat and you run the risk of being stung.
Blowing on the wasps is also not advisable. When we exhale, we release carbon dioxide, which the wasps perceive as a kind of alarm signal. So it’s better to keep calm. Of course, wasps can annoy us in the warm season. Indeed, they become more stubborn and aggressive as the summer progresses. In order not to be bothered by them too much, you can follow a few simple rules. At a picnic, for example, it is advisable to cover the food and drinks so that the insects are often not attracted in the first place. It is particularly recommended for children to enjoy drinks outdoors from closed drinking bottles.
A great way to distract the wasps is by offering them something else. At “Jugend forscht” two schoolgirls found out that wasps especially love overripe grapes. You simply put these down five to ten meters from the picnic location and in many cases you have peace and quiet. In addition, special smells in the form of incense sticks, fragrance lamps or candles, which for example contain lemon, cloves or ammonia, can help. Wasps don’t like these scents at all. There are also sprays on a natural basis that can be sprayed on the table or ceiling and deter wasps. Very stubborn wasps can simply be caught with a glass while they are eating and then released again later.
If you discover a nest in the garden, it is better to keep the approach lane clear and avoid hectic movement in the vicinity. Otherwise there is a risk that the wasps will attack because they want to defend their nest. If the nest is in an inconvenient place in the garden, near or even on or in our house, then in most cases we have to act. Under no circumstances should you remove the nest on your own. Free-hanging nests are constructions of harmless wasp species that are neither interested in our food nor are they conspicuous due to their aggressive behavior. The middle wasp is even already on the red list of threatened speciesbecause it is repeatedly driven out for no reason and its nests are destroyed. If a wasp’s nest is annoying, you can contact the fire brigade or the environmental agency, who will help with relocation.
How dangerous are wasp stings?
Many other species of wasp, such as the wood wasp, are peaceful and don’t care about sweet foods. They build their spherical nests freely hanging on trees, ceilings or wooden beams.
© JPW.Peters / pixelio.de
Even if you follow the rules mentioned, it can sometimes happen that a wasp feels attacked and stings. A wasp sting often occurs, for example, when the animals crawl under our clothes unnoticed by us, we sit on them or we make a sudden movement because we have not seen them. A wasp sting is not pleasant, of course, but it is completely harmless to most people and much less painful than a bee sting. The skin around the bite swells a little and it itches and hurts a little, but most of the time nothing more happens. There are certain ointments that can help relieve the itching and swelling.
The situation is different for people who are allergic to wasp stings. In such a case you have to consult a doctor quickly or drive straight to the clinic, because the skin area not only swells extremely, but the poison also triggers an allergic reaction in the body that can be life-threatening. Most allergy sufferers always have an emergency kit with them so that they can act immediately. However, it is not only dangerous for them if the wasp stings into the mouth or throat. If you overlook a wasp in the soda and take a strong swig, it can happen that the animal stings in the mouth. The swelling can cause shortness of breath in a short time. That is why it is not advisable to drink from a can or dark bottle outside in summer, because a wasp can get lost there unnoticed. Then you should rather drink from a glass or use a straw. Closed drinking glasses and bottles, which the wasps cannot even get into, are best.
One thing is certain: Wasps are nowhere near as aggressive as many people believe. It is not about looking for trouble or attacking us, but rather they want to care for their descendants and fight for their own survival. If you keep calm and follow the most important rules, you can spend most of the summer quite peacefully with wasps.
