Do wasps have a role in the ecosystem at all? They bother us and cause painful stings. So can we kill them without affecting nature? So in a nutshell: Are wasps useful?

Bees are relatively popular. They are sweet and furry and pollinate our forest fruits and flowers. In a world without bees, we would go hungry and the ecosystem would lose much of its diversity. That is why we are working so hard to reduce the acute bee mortality.

But what about wasps? Wasps sting. They ruin summer picnics. They nest in the house and garden and buzz aggressively around us. There seems to be no reason to like wasps.

At least that's what most people think. We beat wasps to death and we poison their nests. We explain what wasps actually mean for our environment.

What is a wasp?

There are over 150,000 species of wasps. Some are tiny and do not sting: these are ichneumon wasps that lay their eggs in the bodies of other arthropods, animals with an external skeleton, a segmented body and jointed legs. The hatchling wasps hatch and eat the host from the inside out. At least half of the known wasp species are parasites, and these wasps are very useful in agriculture as pest controllers - there are even factories that mass produce these wasps to sell to farmers.

In Europe, we know the yellow and black striped wasp or hornet, which has a very unpleasant sting. These stinging wasps are the species that everyone knows and dislikes. We notice them because there are many of them, they live in colonies, just like honey bees. They are social wasps and, just like honey bees, they have a queen who lays the eggs and lots of workers who raise the brood. There are about 1,000 species of social wasps.

The wasp's role in the ecosystem: Are wasps useful?

Like many insects, wasps perform many important tasks in nature that help us live healthy and happy lives. These tasks are called ecosystem services. The wasps' most important ecosystem service is pest control.

Wasps are predators, which means they hunt live prey (such as flies, caterpillars and spiders) as a source of protein. The wasps we see on the road are the hunting adult wasps. But these don't eat the prey; they feed it to their developing brood in the nest. Baby wasps are carnivores, the adult wasps are not. In social wasp species, the babies give a sugary reward to the adults who feed them. So predatory wasps help keep other arthropod populations under control. Without these wasps we would be inundated with flies, caterpillars, spiders and other arthropods. Wasps provide us with free, environmentally friendly, natural pest control; non-toxic, harmless methods of killing pests that use the natural behaviour of wild organisms. Services. In a world without wasps, we would have to use more toxic pesticides to control the insects that eat our crops and transmit disease.

But wasps don't just control pests, wasps also pollinate. Consider that adult wasps do not eat the prey; instead, they collect and eat sugar from the nectar of flowers (or sweets from our picnic). They pollinate the flowers they visit, just like bees. But wasps are not as choosy as bees - they visit every flower. This means that wasps are not as efficient as bees at pollination. However, being less choosy means that wasps can be useful substitute pollinators in habitats like cities and farmland where there are not enough of the right kinds of flowers for bees to thrive. Wasps may become more important pollinators in the future as more of the natural world is disturbed and urbanised by humans.

First aid for wasp stings

Can dead wasps sting?

Why are wasps useful?