A friend asked the other day, “What good are wasps?”
That is a very good question, especially if you have ever been stung by one.
This is the time of year when social wasps (those that live in a large colony) are at their highest population levels.
Those gray football sized bald-faced hornets’ nests have as many occupants right now as any time during the year. It is the same situation with those ground-dwelling yellow jackets.
The reason is that once the outside temperatures begin to hover in the 40s, all of the workers wasps in those nests will die. Only the fertilized queens survive the winter, to start a colony from scratch all over again next spring.
By this time of year, the colony is as big as it is ever going to get.
The wasp queens survive in sheltered hideaways, alone and inactive until the weather warms up again. So if you can leave those big dangerous nests alone for a few more weeks, you won’t have to worry again until next summer.
Actually, you shouldn’t have to worry about most of the nearly 30,000 species of wasps worldwide, because although most can sting humans, most don’t.
By far, most species of wasps are solitary, not social, so they don’t have a large nest to aggressively defend.
Yellow jackets, bald-faced hornets and paper wasps are the most common social wasps, and the ones that most people have a bad experience with. If you meet them out in the open, you are unlikely to get stung. But get too close to their nest, and the whole tribe comes after you.
Solitary wasps and bees get a bad rap from their social cousins. Solitary wasps live alone and are not aggressive.
Solitary wasps like mud daubers, potter wasps, cow killers, cicada killers, grass-carrying wasps, etc., rarely sting unless you pick one up, and who does that?
Which brings us back to the question of what good are wasps?
Just like every thing in nature (ticks possibly excluded), wasps are part of the whole picture where everything has a purpose.
Without wasps, your garden of flowers or vegetables would have many more caterpillars, aphids, spiders and beetles.
Adult wasps eat nectar, and feed insects to their developing larva.
Many wasps specialize in the insects that they prey on. Tiny Braconid wasps, for example, lay their eggs on and kill tomato hornworms. Anyone who has ever grown tomatoes has got to like that.
Blue mud daubers specialize in capturing black widow spiders to feed their young.
Grass-carrying wasps capture only snowy tree crickets, and great golden digger wasps target crickets and katydids.
Cicada killers feed their young — you guessed it — only cicadas. The list goes on and on.
Even the dreaded yellow jackets and bald-faced hornets capture lots of insects. They just aren’t as specific about their prey.
Wasps are eco-friendly natural pest control, no chemicals, no expense.
Wasps are also pollinators. Although not considered as efficient pollinators as bees, wasps, as pollinators, can be important.
At least 100 species of orchids and many figs rely only on wasps for pollination.
So, wasps have value in nature. You may not think they have much value when they are stinging you, but you can mostly avoid that.
If you get too close to a yellow jacket nest or a paper wasp or bald-faced hornet nest, run. Get out of the vicinity of the nest and you will be safe.
If the nest is in a high-traffic area, spray it at night or, safer yet, call a professional.
A single wasp flying near you is not a threat. The wasp has no reason to sting, and it won’t, unless you start swatting at it.
Relax and observe. I have learned a lot by watching, and not panicking, around wasps
People often wonder, what good are skunks, what good are snakes, what good is poison ivy or kudzu.
Like wasps, all of those things are part of the whole ecosystem that has evolved and grown together.
It is the humans that usually screw things up, not nature.
Life’s better when you try to understand and enjoy nature instead of fighting it.
Comments, questions or suggestions for future nature articles are welcome at don.hazel@gmail.com
