VAL BOURNE’S GARDEN WILDLIFE
Wasps do a lot of good in the garden, says Val
“Wasp populations in the UK are declining”
ISPEND a lot of my time talking to gardening societies about my eco-friendly garden. The picture that causes a sharp intake of breath from the audience is the one of the wasp. It’s probably the most hated creature, after the slug, and it’s so unfair because wasps are meat-eating bees. For most of the year, they’re collecting small wriggly things from your garden to take back to their nest, so they’re doing you a great service. A single colony of social wasps can remove several kilograms of insect pests such as aphids and caterpillars over a summer, and wasps pollinate a wide range of plants.
Wasps have a sweet tooth because when they feed the larvae in the nest, they’re rewarded by a sugary droplet of waste material. Once the nest is empty, wasps look for a new source of sugar.
I try to have nectar-rich plants aplenty in August, and one favourite with wasps is the tall red-hot poker Kniphofia ‘Prince Igor’. I acquired this more than 20 years ago from the late Mrs Chaworth-Musters of Felley Priory in Nottinghamshire.
The 21∕2-acre garden of Felley Priory contains a lot of topiary, and I once went upstairs to admire the garden layout from above. When I turned around, this indomitable lady was brandishing a shotgun, so whenever ‘Prince Igor’ flowers I think of her and her shotgun! If you knock against the stems of ‘Prince Igor’ you get showered with sugary droplets, so in August the flowers are covered in wasps getting their sugar fix.
There are more than 7,000 species of wasp in the UK, but there are only nine social wasps. The two you’re most likely to see are the common wasp (Vespula vulgaris) and German wasp (Vespula germanica). These are quite similar in appearance, with black and yellow stripes, but the best way to tell them apart is to look at the dots on the abdomen. The German wasp has black dots between the bands, whereas the dots on the common wasp are fused into black bands on the abdomen.
Markings on the face also vary. The common wasp has an anchor-shaped marking rather than the dots or vertical strip found on the German wasp. The German wasp also has a complete yellow band behind the eye. It’s impossible to tell the difference in flight.
UK wasp populations are declining at similar rates to bee populations. And yet these are the only creatures I’ve seen tackle a mature cabbage white caterpillar. I watched four wasps cut one up and fly away with the bits.