It’s repellent! Get ready for a summer insect plague

SCOTS have been warned to bracing themselves for a plague of wasps, ants, midges and daddy longlegs.

The mild winter, chilly spring and current warm temperatures have led to predictions of an explosion of insects – just in time for summer.

Vanessa Hartley, of Taysidebased Andy Law Pest Control, said: ‘We are sure it’s going to be a very busy summer for wasps. This year we had a bad winter with all the snow, but the temperatures weren’t really that low

‘Wasp nests are now developing ’

so a lot of queens have survived, though they were quite late in waking up from hibernation due to the chilly spell in early spring.

‘We’ve had the loveliest warm, sunny weather these past few weeks and this has meant that the wasp nests are now developing at some speed, despite being late in starting to be built.

‘The warmer the weather is, the bigger the nest gets and the more wasps it has in it.’

Daddy longlegs, or crane flies, are expected to reach record numbers this summer, with experts at Scotland’s Rural College finding millions of crane fly larvae, 90 per cent of which ‘will end up as crane flies’ when they hatch this month or in July.

Dr Alison Blackwell, who runs the Scottish Midge Forecast, said the ‘sudden warm and wet weather conditions’ had brought out ‘a high level of midges’.

She added that the Highlands is the area of Britain most affected by the pests.