Be Nice to Wasps

This was originally published on my Facebook page in September of 2023, but not many people saw it at the time.

Not long ago, I was startled by a friend describing her afternoon of knocking down wasp nests. I would describe this person as left-of-center, concerned about climate change, sustainability, and otherwise living within the earth’s carrying capacity. It didn’t compute that knocking down wasp nests would be part of the day’s agenda. On the other hand, most people knock them down or call an exterminator. After all, they are scary murder bugs that serve no purpose. Right?

Here’s the problem. They are actually a fairly vital part of the ecosystem.

First and foremost, wasps are pollinators. Okay, that’s a broad brush, MOST wasps are pollinators. Yellow jackets aren’t great pollinators, but wasps you would see on the side of your house are, including the fairly ubiquitous paper wasp and the Guinea wasp in the image below. Bees and butterflies get all the love, but worldwide there are hundreds of plants that depend at least partially on wasps and 164 who wouldn’t exist without wasps.

They are important bugs.

The second reason why wasps matter is pest control. Without chemical pesticides, wasps are actually quite good at patrolling crops for aphids, caterpillars, and other crop-destroying bugs. You can’t have organic gardening without wasps.

I get it, wasps hurt. However, they only hurt when we surprise each other. Once acclimated, wasps become quite tame and tolerant of human presence. (An exception to this is the bald-faced hornet that never learns to coexist in my experience.) I’ve been working with wasps most of my life, compliments of my dad’s three-acre organic garden and we learned to get along with them most of the time, even relocating a few nests here and there.

Don’t believe me? Here’s how my afternoon went.

We just moved into a house with an unmaintained outside space. Vines had grown up the side of a shed and into the attic allowing for a potential infestation of carpenter ants. The vines needed to go as soon as possible.

The only problem is that some Guinea wasps had made their home on the side of the shed, right in the middle of the offending vines. I found them the hard way with the sacrifice of a pinkie finger. They gave me a warning and I backed off.

After making several approaches to let them know I wasn’t a threat, I pulled out a pair of two-foot-long limb loppers that I have named Cyndi. I snipped the vines very carefully and then removed them piece by piece without disturbing the wasps.

Mind you, I did this on a bright sunny day. In my experience, wasps are more irritable in low light, so if you want to try this at home, wait until a sunny day. In this case, the wasps barely even budged and never once moved into a defense posture (legs extended and tail pointed up.)

Then I took a selfie with my new friends who can now pollinate flowers and kill caterpillars.

That’s it.

Be nice to wasps