Do you ever wonder if wasps suffer from low self-esteem?
If you answered that question at all, I’m guessing you went with a fairly emphatic ‘no’ and moved swiftly to click away from the page in bewildered contempt. I beseech you to stay your hand a moment. The question isn’t as inane as it sounds.
Okay, it is. But there’s a reason for asking. You see, I rather think that if any creature had a right to be a little lacking in confidence, to feel misunderstood and hard done by, it should be the humble wasp. Is there a more wretchedly unloved living organism on the planet?
Popular rhetoric would have it that bees, whilst technically capable of spiking you with a dose of unpleasantness, are somehow the cheeky chappies of the insect world, gaily flitting about from bud to bud, selflessly spreading pollen, working for the common good. Wasps, on the other hand, are the fallen angels of the garden. Cast out of Eden for an unspecified sin and forever tarnished by their failure to produce honey. Hollywood does not make films about cute wasps; Cuddly toy manufacturers don’t want to know.
Indeed, even that bastion of worldly knowledge, Wikipedia, refuses to look wasps squarely in the eye and instead defines them by what they aren’t rather than what they are “any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor an ant”.
Well, let this blog be a lone advocate in defence; a legal aid for the damned if you will. First up, a little myth busting: Not all wasps sting. In fact, none of the males do – and of the females it is only the workers and fertile queens from some of the 100,000 or so species. When they do sting, their venom is less than that of a bee, considerably so as it happens. Bees will inflict 50 micrograms of nastiness upon you in a single blow, whereas the wasp swipes in with a fairly insipid maximum of 15 micrograms per strike (albeit with the capacity to press the repeat button fairly persistently).
And wasps are far from useless. Sure, bees take the credit for the sickly sweet stuff that drips from their hives, but wasps are willing to do the unglamorous. You know the phrase ‘It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it’? That was (or should have been) written with them in mind. Almost every pest insect has a wasp which parasites it, making them extraordinarily important in the control of agricultural blight, particularly given that they have little impact on crops.
Despite this evidence, many of you will remain unconvinced of their virtues, which would make a blog in itself (why do we so often persist in holding onto untrue beliefs?), but that is not why we’re discussing them just now.
The reason is that I saw my first wasp of the year today, buzzing around the front door. And it was a hugely welcome sight. Not because I am particularly fond of wasps (I’ll stick up for them but we’re not close friends). No, it was an uplifting moment because they are, in my own confused little mind, synonymous with warm weather, and I believed, I really believed, that spring is incontrovertibly on the way. Little clues have offered themselves up in recent days – clusters of spring flowers, the occasional glimpse of the sun, people hesitating about which coat, or how many, it’s necessary to wear.
Away from its usual role of picnic pest, buzzing drone against the window pane and swooping menacing agent of the devil, today’s wasp was a very messenger of hope. There is something in that. One small irritation, observed in a different context, instead represented something positive and optimistic. A reason to be cheerful rather than annoyed.
Remember that, please, when the days are long again and the newspaper as makeshift swatter season is in full swing.
One swallow does not make a summer, but one wasp just might make a spring.
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