Big wasp survey

[Anduril]

On Countryfile now, send all your dead wasps for the survey.

 

[Softley]

Saw this in the news last week. Very few wasps around near me and the ones I've seen are still taking dead bees. Nothing in the traps to send in.

 

[Ely]

I've seen a few buzzing around the hives

 

[Hivemaker.]

Good to see some real research being done about wasps.

http://www.bigwaspsurvey.org/

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0817/210817-The-Big-Wasp-Survey

 

[masterBK]

There seems to be very few social wasps around and I have not seen a european hornet this year at all. The pest controllers must be feeling it as wasp clearance is a major source of income at this time of year.

 

[Hivemaker.]

There seems to be very few social wasps around and I have not seen a european hornet this year at all.

There is no shortage of wasps in this area, nor Hornets, see around hundred or more of them every day, in the back garden and hawking about in every apiary.

 

[Anduril]

There seems to be very few social wasps around and I have not seen a european hornet this year at all. The pest controllers must be feeling it as wasp clearance is a major source of income at this time of year.

The most I've seen are 20 when they overran one of my mating nucs, since then I have only seen around 2 a week.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Good to see some real research being done about wasps.

http://www.bigwaspsurvey.org/

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0817/210817-The-Big-Wasp-Survey

Listened to Dr Sumner at this year's spring convention - very interesting speaker and I was surprised at what she said about how little research had been done on British wasps.
There is next to no data on how much garden pests a wasp colony consumes in a season - the nearest they can estimate from the data they had was 2.5 KILOS (still an impressive amount) so the more research the better.

 

[Beefriendly]

Listened to Dr Sumner at this year's spring convention - very interesting speaker and I was surprised at what she said about how little research had been done on British wasps.
There is next to no data on how much garden pests a wasp colony consumes in a season - the nearest they can estimate from the data they had was 2.5 KILOS (still an impressive amount) so the more research the better.

There is a lot of information from New Zealand where the forage for wasps from the honey dew forests is amazing, but not more than 12-15kg per nest was their estimate. I'll post the references if you want to read further. One of the puzzles for me in the oft quoted "they keep down greenfly etc" is that mature wasp numbers are not very high at that time of the year. Makes me think ...yes they feed on greenfly etc....but perhaps not enough in wasp numbers to have a significant effect on their numbers.

 

[Karol]

Totally bloody irresponsible!

The BBC contacted me about getting involved in the big wasp survey. My advice was by all means survey wasps but NOT by setting traps - the risk to human health is just too great. There are better and safer ways to survey wasps.

Did they listen - like f' they did.

It's one thing to ask beekeepers to get involved in something like this but it's something else entirely to ask lay people who have little if any experience of dealing safely with hymenoptera.

To have lay people setting low efficiency beer traps in their gardens is plain reckless irrespective of the safety advice issued. As if the NHS doesn't have enough on its plate to have the BBC recommend people unnecessarily expose themselves to risk and if things go wrong seek help from the NHS!!!

Let's hope none of those taking part are harmed. If they are then the BBC will share in the culpability especially because they have trivialised much of the risk.

 

[Karol]

With respect to greenfly - wasp don't feed on aphids - they milk them for honeydew. They do however 'eat' aphids when they're in the winged phase of their lifecycle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aivj4fNF8-s

 

[philipm]

Reading the other day about how insect numbers had dropped and you no longer have to clean the windscreen on the car when driving around ,unlike in the past when there were alway bugs plastered everywhere.Riding the BSA Bantam in the summer was quite painfull with things flying around.

 

[polomadh]

I really wouldn't want the job of opening up the packets of dead wasps, and other insects rotting in whatever juice has been used. I can't imagine that they will get too many useful samples. I would have thought a more productive way would have been to trust folk to do initial identification first

 

[Softley]

I really wouldn't want the job of opening up the packets of dead wasps, and other insects rotting in whatever juice has been used. I can't imagine that they will get too many useful samples. I would have thought a more productive way would have been to trust folk to do initial identification first

They want people to wash and dry before sending in.

 

[alfazer]

On a side note....did I hear them say something about a black bee article on next weeks show?

 

[Into the lions den]

Heaving with wasps up here. They are a total menace and have massacred the mating boxes on one of our sites. Probably more wasps than I have seen for many years. When you close down the entrances to a single beeway they not only fight the guards bees, they are trying to eat their way in through the poly, probably due to tiny amounts of syrup impregnation into the walls adjacent to the feeders.

No hornets up here ever....but getting the normal quota of hornet alarms from people when they spot a woodwasp, and cannot be reassured they are benign critters and that that thing at the back is not a sting.

 

[Karol]

They want people to wash and dry before sending in.

I presume you mean the dead wasps - not themselves or their dishes?

Ever tried washing 5 or 6 dozen wasps and then drying them? No chance!

I'm confident there's not a person in the UK if not the whole globe that has examined more traps and sifted through more drowned wasps than I have - literally many many hundreds of thousands of them. Drowned wasps don't dry out that easily.

I can imagine the Royal Mail doing its nut when envelopes full of wasps in foil get compressed in the mail and start oozing unctuous, potentially microbiologically hazardous, liquid. I can also see lots of other people complaining that their mail has been damaged and stinking to high heaven. (Drowned wasp juice concentrate is pretty vial).

And just to add to the sense of how ludicrous the big wasp survey is as presently devised - the shipping of biological samples is a restricted activity and has to comply with liquid tight packaging requirements and potentially a licence to ship. Add to that that wasps are potential vectors of salmonella, E.coli, brucella, campylobacter etc etc, and planet academia thinks its a wonderful idea to send potentially contaminated wasp juice loose in the post!!!!

Sorry - do I sound disparaging?

 

[alldigging]

We have now reached our target of 2000 trap registrations, and are now unable to accommodate more sampling from the public this year.

http://www.bigwaspsurvey.org/submit-your-wasps/



it does have some ID help on there is people want to ID their own wasps. http://www.bigwaspsurvey.org/the-wasps/#dolichovespula

 

[Softley]

I presume you mean the dead wasps - not themselves or their dishes?

Ever tried washing 5 or 6 dozen wasps and then drying them? No chance!

I'm confident there's not a person in the UK if not the whole globe that has examined more traps and sifted through more drowned wasps than I have - literally many many hundreds of thousands of them. Drowned wasps don't dry out that easily.

I can imagine the Royal Mail doing its nut when envelopes full of wasps in foil get compressed in the mail and start oozing unctuous, potentially microbiologically hazardous, liquid. I can also see lots of other people complaining that their mail has been damaged and stinking to high heaven. (Drowned wasp juice concentrate is pretty vial).

And just to add to the sense of how ludicrous the big wasp survey is as presently devised - the shipping of biological samples is a restricted activity and has to comply with liquid tight packaging requirements and potentially a licence to ship. Add to that that wasps are potential vectors of salmonella, E.coli, brucella, campylobacter etc etc, and planet academia thinks its a wonderful idea to send potentially contaminated wasp juice loose in the post!!!!

Sorry - do I sound disparaging?

Do you think that each trap will attract 5-6 dozen wasps in a week?

I've only had a handful of wasps in my traps over the last month or so. I don't know what it's like in other parts of the UK but the wasps here are only really interested in insects at the moment. I think there must still be a lot of wasp brood about for the wasps to not have to try taking honey from bees.

It will be fewer than 2000 samples spread between various Royal Mail centres sent over about a two week period. I can't see an issue with leakage if people follow the instructions.

We can only wait and see.

 

[Karol]

And therein lies some of the poor science behind the survey which doesn't take into account wasp behaviour/life cycle and the relationship between trap yields and population dynamics.

I have had traps with as many as 19,000 wasps in them. It is entirely feasible to catch several hundred wasps within a week. I've caught over 300 in one afternoon of dynamic trapping. So 5 or 6 dozen in a week is nothing given the right conditions and the use of a low efficiency trap design.

The shame of it is that the wasp survey could have been really meaningful and excellent if it had been set up correctly. Maybe they'll learn for next time.