It’s a grand year to be a wasp

Here we are in mid August and already my garden is becoming something of a no-go zone because of wasps.  And this year’s vintage seem to be real alcoholics in that they buzz around and into wine and beers glasses as well as making every bit of  the BBQ a potentially painful mouthful.

Why?  It’s not as though our garden is awash with tempting fruit… but there seem to be wasps by the bucket load.  And it is not just here that wasps are a problem.  Everyone I have spoken to up and down the country are having wasps make their lives a misery…. If only because they make children scream.

And that seems to be the nub of the problem.  The fear of the punch packed in those stripy backsides is much greater than what little, if any damage wasps actually do to us.  Have you ever been stung?  I have – once – and it was a fair while ago.  Yet I used to make my parents life hell by shouting and screaming whenever a wasp came into the room.   But the painful truth is – I was never stung even once in my childhood.

But this year’s wasp threat has been racked up a notch or two by the presence of hornets in our back garden.   But these fearsome looking beasts are strangely benign.  They look and sound like small helicopters – but don’t seem to share the food and drink habits of their smaller brethren.

 In fact they are quite interesting to watch – particularly when the attack an ants’ nest – a pursuit which has my wholehearted approval. 

However, even these menacing insects seem tame compared to the brutes that shared my swimming pool area on my recent holidays in the south of France.  These were hornets of biblical proportions – easily big enough to cover my hand.

Out of a morbid curiosity I looked them up on Google.  It turns out that these are Asiatic hornets.  Quite what they are doing in France I do not know – but I hope they are not moving north.  If they arrive here – nobody and I do mean nobody will ever be complaining about wasps again.