Britain is under siege from armies of angry drunk German wasps tanked up on rotten fruit and booze.
The lairy yellowjackets – which can spark fatal allergic reactions – are on stinging frenzies during crazed hunts for sugary booze, fermented fruit and jams. Experts say the toxic beasts were already super-aggressive due to soaring temperatures.
But they are being sent extra-crazy as they are no longer getting sweet larvae rewards from the queens they were servicing until this week’s heatwave struck.
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Chris Davies, technical manager for Cleankill Pest Control, said: “The workers have to bring food back to the larvae and each time they bring food back – such as an insect – they get a sweet reward from the larvae. It’s when the larvae develop and stop needing them that they go a bit nuts trying to find sweet things to satisfy their cravings.”
The sweet-toothed wasps, whose Latin name is Vespula germanica are on downtime as queens have finished laying their eggs and are in the process of leaving nests. Insect boffs say they are used to getting a “sweet treat” hit from a sugary liquid called chitin, made from glucose, given to them as a reward for bringing queen wasps such as other bugs and nectar.
Without the supply, they are said to be “attacking everything” to suckle on summer fruits including blackberries, apples, and plums. They are already fermenting in the record heat, giving the wasps a boozy treat.
It makes the worker wasps “tipsy” and “extra bold” according to experts – with the pests far more likely to sting as they are “drunk”. Cleankill’s Chris Davies added as well as fermented fruits, wasps are on the warpath hunting for “anything” sugary, from open cans of fizzy pop to booze and their favourite jam sandwiches.
Paul Bates, also from Cleankill, said the booze-loving yellowjackets can be distinguished from normal wasps due to both their size and three black spots on their face. He is warning they pack a “particularly painful sting”, adding: “Up until mid-August, workers provide food for the larvae in the nest, but once the queen stops laying eggs there is no longer any need for food in the nest so the workers go out to have a good time.
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“When worker wasps have finished their life’s work – when the queen wasps have stopped laying and don’t need food brought to them – the workers are free to go out and enjoy themselves. “There will be drunk wasps around who have been feasting on fermented fruit and will be extra bold. All this means that the wasps are likely to sting for no reason and they are now at their most dangerous.”
The average wasp nest contains 10,000 of the stingers – but some can house up to 500,000 of the nuisances. There are hundreds of millions of the German wasps in the UK, compared to around 240 billion common wasps.
Richard Potter, 45, of Watford, Herts, said he got stung four times by a yellowjacket last summer – saying it left him in “agony” for days. The gardener said: “I’m normally pretty careful around wasps and bees, but last summer I was attacked by a yellowjacket while cutting the grass.
“I had a can of Sprite in the cup holder on my sit-on lawnmower and this wasp just kept coming back and back again. I was getting a bit sick of it, so I swatted at it – and it just attacked, stinging me on my arms and legs.
“It was genuinely agony for the rest of the day, and itched like mad for a few days after.”
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