The Wasp, A gardeners friend.

[butternut]

I don"t know if this has come up before but when I read the article in the Daily Mail (Irish) today I just had to share it with anyone out there who does"nt know and like me thought the only good one was a dead one. As we all know the Queen builds the nest. She scrapes wood from a rafter or dead tree, chews to a plup and spreads it to resemble a paper golf ball stuck to the ceiling. Wasps were in fact the first paper makers, construction continues until eight hexagonal cells are formed. An egg is laid in each cell, and when hatched the Queen goes in search of grub. Heres the best bit----Does she look for suger or nectar? No! What do all the baby wasps dine solely on? INSECTS! Thats what the Queen is scouring your Veg and flowers for. Greenfly, Blackfly,Whitefly, in fact anything small enough to take back to the ravenous young! The young grow up and take over the duties of building and feedinf, The Queen then goes into the egg laying business full time. Every grub that hatches out has to be fed Greenfly, Whitefly, ect, from your garden. The Queen can lay up to 40,000 eggs in a season, How many insects is THAT.? I was staggered. From now on they can have an apple from my tree anytime.

[Zech]

Well I didn't know that! All the same, when I spotted one of those paper golf balls in the conservatory, it had to go, and I'd do the same again!

[Millymollymandy]

I do try to ignore wasps as much as possible (except when eating outside ) and let them do their thing, whatever that is exactly.

That's very interesting though cos when my peach tree was literally COVERED in greenfly last year and a load of ladybirds appeared to the rescue, I also had bees, wasps and hoverflies all over the tree too. I just assumed these were drinking the honeydew that the aphids secreted - so the wasps were probably eating the aphids as well. Brill!!! OK wasps you go up in my estimation now too. Just don't sting me please cos I swell up like a balloon.

[butternut]

hi! millymollymandy, you say you had a lot of ladybirds come to your rescue, please, please, tell them where Ireland is, I found four this year! As a child in the field we had hundreds in every patch of field we lay in, what has happened? where are they? what do they need? Can I encourage them into my garden? Any info please help!

[darkbrowneggs]

Something else quite interesting that you might not know about wasps is apparently when the workers take back protein to feed the larva, the larva "reward" the workers with a sweet sugary liquid, which is what sustains the workers,as their little "waspy waists" won't let anything solids through.

The nest builds up until there is sufficient strength to hatch next year's queens. Once these are hatched out the workers have nothing to do - and nothing to eat so they come round after sweet sugary easily assimilated foods, and all your fruit, and they are of course are rather bad tempered and "waspish" being both bored and hungry.

This is the time to get out your pop bottles with the tops cut off and inverted, with some jam and water with a little washing up liquid in, as the workers who now have nothing to do, and no food supply will just buzz around being a general nuisance until they die of old age.

All the best
Sue

[Millymollymandy]

Ahhhhh I'm starting to feel sorry for poor little wasps now!

Butternut - they stayed here all through the summer, autumn and winter and I had so much hope for my broad beans but they are covered in blackfly. Only have a few ladbybirds around now and the few that I see on my broad beans are just sitting on clean leaves and not going anywhere near the stems which are covered in aphids! I think I was just lucky last year!