Where have all the wasps gone this summer?

Despite their negative reputation and tendency to disrupt picnics, wasps play a crucial role in our ecosystem.

Normally, outdoor activities during this time of year are frequently interrupted by these flying insects. However, 2024 has seen an unusual decline in their numbers.

Experts attribute this change to colder and wetter weather conditions, exacerbated by climate change, which have had a global impact on invertebrates. This trend has been closely monitored by gardeners, experts, and pest controllers. But what exactly do wasps do, why are they important, and will they make a comeback?

“The numbers are so low it’s unbelievable,” said James Tennent, owner of EraserPest, noted a significant decrease in wasp nest treatments.

Last year, his company, serving Essex, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, was called out to treat between 60 and 80 nests by this time. In stark contrast, they dealt with only eight nests in June 2024 and about ten in July.

“We had done a lot by this time last year and couldn’t cope with the amount of calls,” Mr Tennent said.

“This year there’s been some days where we’re waiting for the phone.”

Tennent believes that the weather has played a major role in this decline.

“People haven’t been outside as much to spot them building up,” he said.

“Some of the ones we have been to this year are as big as basketballs, or bigger.”

Similarly, Hitchin Lavender Farm in Hertfordshire reported an “unusually low” number of wasps during the peak season for nest building.

Norfolk Lavender in Heacham, near King’s Lynn, also observed a noticeable absence of wasps around their restaurant tables and fields, where they typically expect to find a few nests each year.

Although often seen as a nuisance, wasps are accidental pollinators and significantly contribute to the pollination process. The Natural History Museum highlights that without wasps, the world could face an overpopulation of spiders and insects.

In the UK, wasps capture approximately 14 million kilograms of insects like caterpillars and greenfly each summer, proving beneficial to gardeners.

The insect conservation charity Buglife, based in Peterborough, confirmed that the decline in wasp numbers is not isolated to the East of England but is observed across the entire UK. Winter flooding and damp conditions leading to mould growth have adversely affected their winter survival rates.

“Many wasp nests are created in the ground and will also have been severely impacted by the further flooding across the country in spring and early summer,” said a spokesperson for the charity.

“A loss of wasps will impact us in a number of ways.

“It leads to reduced pollination, and without wasps our plants are more likely to be eaten by insect larvae otherwise controlled by wasps.”

Thomas Ings, an associate professor in zoology specialising in entomology at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, noted that wasp populations tend to fluctuate annually.

While there is evidence of severe declines in flying insects globally and in the UK, it is still unclear if wasps are experiencing a long-term decline.

“There is evidence what happens in the year before influences what we get the following year,” he said.

“When there are a lot more wasps in one year, you do tend to have slightly fewer wasps in the next.

“It’s probably better to say you can have a bumper year following a bad year, so it could be next year is a better year for wasps, depending on the weather conditions.”

 

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