How useful are the insects?

Unimagined services of the wasp

If they stubbornly join us at the garden table and argue with us about cakes, ice cream and grilled meat, you can of course quickly complain about wasps. Especially from August, when they are over their heads in the care work for the sex animals to be raised in the state, they can behave very aggressively. When in doubt, they are also not shy about the sting, i.e. if they feel attacked. Because, unlike bees, they can sting several times in a lifetime.

Nevertheless, it is advisable to make friends with the animals to a certain extent. First of all, angry confrontation is not really wise in view of the dangers that are inherent in the mass network. And secondly, they also provide valuable services in the garden. Above all, this includes:

• Pollination
• Pest Control

Because they pounce so confidently on our Danish pastries and fruit salads in late summer, wasps give many the impression that they are just parasites. However, their main food source is still flower nectar. The adult workers feed primarily on it, and also on honeydew and sweet vegetable juices. They even specialize in very specific types of flowers - and these also on wasps. Biologically, this adaptation of the flowers to the wasps is called sphecophilia.

Flowers that are sphecophilic, i.e. offer the wasps particularly easy access to their nectar without a suction tool, are mostly brownish, greenish or white in color and have a shape that is easily accessible for the wasps, for example a pharynx or Umbel shape. Typical wasp flowers are ivy, brownwort and ragweed. When collecting nectar, the animals also take on the task of pollination.

In addition to this positive trait, wasps also eat a lot of pests in the garden. In contrast to the adult animals, the larvae need a lot of animal protein to grow. To do this, the workers diligently collect caterpillars of various pests, spiders, grasshoppers and aphids, which they chew and feed to their offspring.