WASPS!

Image Gallery When a hornet comes right at you, retreat!

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How to get along with your flying neighbors.

By Terry Krautwurst

Friendly or fierce? Bad or beneficial? When it comes to these summertime residents, both fear and beauty are in the eye of the beholder.

My earliest memories include the time my big brother pushed me out of the hayloft onto a cement floor, the summer morning I toddled off a pier and nearly drowned, and The Day The Wasp Stung Me. I can still recall my terror—overwhelming as only a small child's can be—when the wasp landed on the inside of my shirt collar. Maybe three years old at the most, I took off running pell-mell across the barnyard toward our house, screaming, flailing at the insect. Naturally it stung me. I swatted some more, and it stung me again. By the time my father reached me and brushed the wasp away, my neck and shoulder were dotted with a half-dozen painful red swellings. Luckily, I've never been sensitive to wasp venom, and after a few days of soreness and itching the bites faded away.

Not so the memory. Just as the hayloft incident taught me to think twice before turning my back on my big brother, and falling off the pier gave me a lesson in the difference between bath water and deep water, the wasp stings left a lasting impression. It was a good thing, too, because when you're a boy growing up on a dairy farm, keeping your distance from wasps and hornets is almost as essential as keeping your feet out of cow pies. But I was more than just wary of wasps. I spent most of my young life in compulsive fear of them—and of nearly any insect that looked or even sounded like a wasp. I was convinced that their sole purpose was to attack and sting people (me in particular).

It was only years later, when my interests in nature and the outdoors forced me to come to grips with my fear, that I learned otherwise. Wasps are among the most maligned of all living creatures. They play extraordinary, fascinating roles in nature. As a group, they're the single most effective natural control of earth's agricultural and household insect pests. And though it's true that more people die each year from wasp and bee stings than from the bites of all other venomous creatures, it's also true that wasps and bees are far more mild-mannered than commonly believed, and seldom sting without cause.

For that matter, of the 2,500 or so species of wasps known to inhabit North America, only about 50 can sting at all. What we call a stinger is actually a modified ovipositor, the hollow tube through which female insects deposit eggs. Most wasps use the instrument for that purpose alone. Some species employ the tube to bore holes into tree bark or other vegetable matter in which to lay eggs. Others, such as trichogrammas, the gardeners' allies against cabbage loopers and corn borers, inject eggs into the bodies or larvae of other insects. Only a relative handful of wasps are also capable of injecting venom through their ovipositors, and thus a painful sting. But even of these, virtually all are mild-mannered loners, solitary wasps that ordinarily keep their distance from man and use their venom-loaded hypodermics only to stun spiders, caterpillars or other insects with which to provision their nests. Except when mating, they live their lives alone.

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