A sting in the tale

That’s the hoodies, because although wasps are aggressive and tend to stick together for protection (although there are solitary specimens), they can be valued members of the greater garden society. They actually get rid of a lot of pests.

But, unfortunately, they tend to be very territorial; never mind that the garden belongs to the gardener – get too near and you get stung.

So, wasps tend to be friendless and are targeted for extinction whenever they build a nest in the wrong place.

But if you can live with them in your garden, do so. They’ll be there for only one season because the vast majority die off in winter (unlike honey bees, they can’t store food) and it’s up to hibernating queens to start new colonies the next year.

And if you hate wasps but can’t bring yourself to destroy them and their intricately-designed homes, try tricking them.

A recent Yorkshire innovation, The Waspinator, claims to deter wasps from building nests nearby and then repels wasps all summer long from visiting the garden for food and building materials.

The device not only clears the garden of wasps, but does so without harming them so they are free to get on with their good work, killing aphids and caterpillars which do so much damage to plants and flowers.

Wasp expert Richard Piddocke, of Waspinator Ltd, says “Waspinator is a humane and ecologically friendly way of keeping wasps at bay without disturbing the balance of nature in and around your garden. Wasps are a really annoying species but they do have their place in the great scheme of things, and by using Waspinator to keep them at bay we can live alongside them, albeit at a safe distance

Waspinator utilises wasps’ territorial nature to frighten them away. Wasps defend the area around their nests very aggressively and if a wasp from one colony gets too near another nest, it will be attacked; if it gets caught; it will be stung to death. So wasps instinctively know they are in danger if they see a nest that is not their own and will fly away to somewhere they don’t feel threatened.

Waspinator is a fake wasps’ nest designed to look just like the real thing to wasps’ vision, so when they see it, they think they are in danger territory and fly away.

Waspinator is £12.95 for a pack of two (plus postage and packing by mail order).

* www.waspinator.co.uk