Wasps are not for everyone, but they really are quite amazing.
Check out these wasp facts:
- Wasps live everywhere but Antarctica.
- Wasps are fierce predators and they hunt and eat almost every insect pest that harms crops.
- Wasps can sting over and over again.
- Most wasps live less than one year, some workers for just a few months. Queens, however, can live for several years.
- Wasps make nests from paper by chewing up strips of bark which are spat out to form a rough paper.
- A queen starts a new colony each spring. She raises a few worker wasps first to make the nest larger and bring food. Then she starts laying eggs. A colony can grow to 50,000 wasps in one summer.
- In the autumn, all the wasps die except for a few new queens. The new queens spend the winter in an old log or burrow. In the spring, they make new colonies.
- Worldwide there are over 120,000 species of wasps.
- In the UK there are around 9,000 species of wasp, just 9 of these are social nest-building wasps.
- Wasps live all around the world and are found in nearly every country.
- The largest social wasp is the Asian giant hornet at up to 5 centimeters (2.0 in) in length
- In stinging species, only the females have a sting
- They come in every color imaginable, from yellow to black, metallic blue and green and bright red and orange.
- Some wasp species are similar to bees. They are distinguishable from bees by their pointed lower abdomens and narrow “waist,” a petiole, that separates the abdomen from the thorax.
- They also have little to no hair on their bodies (as opposed to bees) and don’t play much of a role in the pollination of plants.
- All social wasps, those that are not parasitic build nests.
- The vast majority of solitary wasps make their nest in the ground.
- All wasps go through complete metamorphosis. From the egg a larva hatches out. The larva grows and sheds its whole skin several times before transforming into a pupa. This resting stage has some of the body parts of an adult, but it can’t move or feed. Inside, it is transforming into an adult. Eventually an adult emerges from its pupal skin.
- Vespa scooters are named after wasps — vespa means “wasp” in Italian.
Do you have a problem with Wasps?
We can provide you not only with a wasp nest removal service but we also provide the advice that you need to deal with wasps.