About wasps

Order: Hymenoptera

Superfamily: Vespoidea

Did you know that
wasps see colour and can sometimes mistake a flowery blouse for a nectar-rich flower. Unlike bees, wasps have a poisonous sting that they can use several times.

Life cycle

A fertile queen builds a nest where she then lays her eggs. The eggs then become larvae that the queen nurtures before they spin their caps and pupate. After a few weeks they transform into workers. The task of the workers is to collect food for the queen and her larvae and to extend and improve the nest, allowing the queen to relax and concentrate on laying eggs and being fed. At the end of the summer, the queen dies and the colony dissolves.

Diet

The workers feed the larvae with protein-rich food, such as insect larvae. The adult wasps feed on sugar from nectar. At the end of the summer, wasps need large quantities of sugar, which is why they bother ice cream-eating, wine-drinking and outdoor-eating holiday makers. That is why a wasp trap is so good. You simply fill it with a sugary liquid and stand or hang it a short distance away before you start eating.

Uses

Wasps are important pollinators of berries, fruit and flowers. They are also predators and capture larvae that otherwise would become noxious insects, such as the codling moth that attacks our apple trees.

Queen, drones and workers

Drones are males, they have no sting and they are hatched from unfertilised eggs. The small number of fertilised eggs that are given extra nutrition can develop into queens, which then swarm with drones. The majority of the eggs become workers. The eggs are fertilised but do not receive enough nourishment to become queens.