Public urged to drown wasps in beer to help conserve them
THE public has been urged to drown wasps using beer in a bizarre conservation project which has prompted criticism by wildlife experts.
Ecologists at the University College London (UCL) and the University of Gloucestershire are encouraging drinkers to set alcohol traps in their gardens then post the dead carcasses back to them, so the insects can be identified and counted.
The team claims it wants to “harness the public’s hatred of wasps” to find out more about where they live and how common different types are, as part of The Big Wasp Survey.
“While we are asking people to kill some wasps, which is a bit unusual for a project aimed at conserving them, it really is the only way that we can identify the wasp species around and be sure that the in- formation we get from the project is worthwhile,” said Professor Adam Hart, an entomologist from the University of Gloucester. “At this time of the year, wasp colonies are at the end of their life and the wasps we catch are old workers, who will die at the end of the summer.”
However, insect experts have criticised the project, pointing out that wasps are important pollinators and the traps are likely to capture bees and other insects. Most other insect counting projects, such as the annual Great British Bee Count involve taking photographs and recording the locations of sightings.
Matt Shardlow, of the insect conservation charity Buglife, said: “We are very uncomfortable about a project that is harnessing the UK public’s hatred of wasps and encouraging them to kill wasps wholesale. Pollinator populations are in decline, including wasp populations that have plummeted dramatically since the 1980s. We should be encouraging tolerance and understanding of our disappearing pollinators, not fostering hatred.”
Buglife has spent years campaigning alongside the National Farmers’ Union to secure a pollinator monitoring programme, which is expected to be implemented by the government within the next 12 months and will give accurate data on wasp numbers.
There are more than 9,000 species of wasp in the UK but only a handful are the black and yellow social wasps. The insects are useful for gardeners, with a single colony of social wasps removing several pounds of pests – such as aphids and caterpillars – over a summer.
Dr Seirian Sumner, of UCL, said: “We would like to find out more about where they live and how common they are; and to do that we need the public’s help.” The project, with the BBC’S Countryfile programme, is sponsored by the Royal Entomological Society.
Does the wasp have any friends? Unlike the bee, it seems to have no obvious merit to help mitigate its propensity to ruin any summer al-fresco activity. Now a team of ecologists wants to “harness the public’s hatred of wasps” by encouraging people to engage in a mass drowning of the pesky creatures in alcohol traps set up in gardens. The carcasses would then be posted to researchers as part of the Big Wasp Survey to help establish how many different species there are. Even for such an unloved insect this seems a bit drastic, though worker wasps die at the end of the summer in any case. Moreover, conservationists claim wasps are important as pollinators and kill pests like aphids, so should be treated with greater respect. That’s not an approach likely to find favour with harassed picnickers.