Damned wasps, you say. But they must have some purpose in the scheme of things. They look good, too. For another, their nests, that is those of them which are overground and visible, are works of art. A friend bought an old house and found in the greenhouse a strange object, about two feet long and nearly a foot deep. It was light to lift and was strikingly coloured, seeming to be made up of small leaves of a light substance, layered, brown in colour with a whitish pattern on each leaf or section. Artistically admirable. Apparently abandoned. A wasps' nest. The books tell you that the substance is paper which the wasps have made from wood. Not much satisfaction to those who are especially vulnerable and react seriously to stings of wasps (and mosquitos and others). Did you notice that there was a shortage of wasps this year? One person, who is subject to pain and swelling at a sting and must carry around at all times in the season one of the several spray-chemicals which ease the pain at once and bring down the swelling, took extra precautions - one spray in the car, one in the handbag, one lying around handily in the house. No diminution in wasp action was noticed here, particularly in and about the back garden with its many flowering plants. Yet a question was asked in the BBC Wildlife magazine by someone living in Bedfordshire: "Why are there so few wasps this year?" He or she should have been in Dublin 6, where they penetrated through every open door and window and caused some unease, firstly in the vulnerable member of the family and secondly because the dog, the daft dog, thinks they are flies which he can gobble.
The magazine's expert answers the Bedfordshire reader that many nests are under the ground (in banks, often) and susceptible to waterlogging, and to damp. In wet weather, too, the queen cannot forage for her brood. The wet spring of 1998 started it all off, the magazine explains, for many an over-wintering queen and nest were casualties. Spring 1999 had better weather, but there were fewer over-wintering queens with her broods-to-be. Fewer wasps is bad news, says the expert, for gardeners as wasps - 10,000 to 20,000 reared annually from a single colony - rank among the most important predators of caterpillars, aphids and other garden pests. Thanks, but still the instinct is to reach for the swatter as they climb up the window just as you sit down to eat. Definitely no falling-off noticed here. In fact three anti-sting cans were bought.