Yesterday, November 19^th in a cold greenhouse, I was playing with some Christmas decorations and went to wipe the table with a rag when out fell a live, albeit very sleepy wasp. It has been below freezing at night for a couple of weeks now. I have bad instincts when it comes to wasps so crushed the poor thing. Then my conscience spoke to me and said, “that could have been a queen!”

Why should I care if it was, you may wonder but wasps like all insects are part of the living network and they do serve a purpose. We only have interactions with them for a short time in the year, usually fall, whereas mosquitoes are irritating all summer long.

As most of us have learned , interactions with wasps are not always pleasant and I am sure each of us could recount a few. Most of my stings have been received when picking raspberries but the worst encounter I had was, when chaperoning a Grade One class on an outdoor adventure, one of the children accidentally stepped on a ground nest. Oh Boy, was that a bad experience with several children stung and just me, the teacher, also stung, to remain calm as we turned around and headed back to school with tears flowing freely. My granddaughter was on a mountain adventure one time when badly stung in similar circumstances by stepping on a ground nest on a hot summer day. She reacted badly with hives quickly erupting. Her quick thinking leader immediately put her in a nearby exceedingly cold mountain stream. She was okay but it was a warning to learn how to deal with a situation like that. She now carries an EpiPen.

So why should I feel badly if I killed a queen wasp. Wasps are great cleaners, pollinators and pest control agents and they carry yeast in their guts, which is why, probably, the wasp I found was in the greenhouse with the grapes. Their juices would be very appealing to a wasp. There are thousands of wasp species in the world but most are harmless to humans. It is those that like our food as much as we do, that cause us grief. European wasps, hornets and yellow jackets are some of the most common culprits and yes, there are times when they need to be dealt with. However we need a balance and that is when it gets difficult because what a person may think is a nasty wasp may not be. Maybe it is a docile type of paper wasp. We have no doubt when at a picnic or enjoying a steak on the deck and it is those circumstances that deserve action.

I read that wasps cannot see red, so if you wear red, will that mean they cannot see you and avoid you? They apparently do not like citrus so maybe those citronella candles might deter them and wasp traps placed further away usually help but do not eradicate them. The best way to keep them at bay is to find where they are coming from and destroy the source. It is not always an easy task. It is frequently in the fall when leaves have fallen that we can see the beautiful paper nests they make.

Leaves can camouflage these nests very well and sometimes wasps build them in unseen cavities on buildings and trees. By watching the wasps and where they travel it is often possible to see where they enter a wall or a hole in the ground. Just don’t get on their travel path.

Above; A wasps nest clearly visible now the leaves have fallen. Close by is a seat for watching the wildlife on the lake and I wonder how many people this fall were disturbed by the wasps comings and goings.

So why are wasps useful? They keep pest populations under control by using them. Some farmers will bring in wasps in order to control aphids, grubs, caterpillars and weevils. They are cleaners and use dead bugs. They use bugs to feed to their larvae in a complicated process that sees the food regurgitated. Adult wasps feed mostly on flower  nectar and the liquid sugars left lying around at your picnic. They pollinate as many flowers as other insects do. The yeasts they carry in their gusts are the wild yeasts cultivated and used in wine and bread making.

Wasps live a very short time but it varies from species to species. 12 to 22 days is the norm for a worker wasp but queens can live for a year. As with most insects the life cycle is similar – egg, larva, pupa, adult. When a new queen has become an adult the nest will start to die off and the new queen will hibernate for the winter. She will find a sheltered spot, tuck in her legs, draw her wings under and sleep all winter. The biggest danger to her are other insect predators or coming out too early in the spring and starving through lack of nectars.

This video is well worth the watch.

I found the pictures of a wasp in hibernating fetal position in this article, quite lovely!