Where were all the wasps this year?

Think about it. Who has not been been chased screeching around a picnic as a child, followed by determined wasps after your jam sarnie? In the 70s and 80s, my Mum would make wasp traps out of old jam pots and catch dozens of them. Yet this year (and think hard), there were hardly any vespula vulgaris bothering your alfresco dining were there?

Before you say ‘good riddance', consider that the social wasp is an important pollinator as well as a natural predator on many garden pests, including leatherjackets, flies and caterpillars.

Returning to the 1970s, if you were around then, perhaps you recall driving on summer nights and witnessing the so-called “moth snowstorms’ in your headlights or having to stop to wipe off the dozens of bugs that had been squished on your (or your parents’) windscreen. When was the last time that you had to do that? When was the last time you saw a cloud of moths around your kitchen light (sending my Mum screaming into the living room, usually) if you foolishly left your back door open? Think hard.

This is because we are witnessing ‘the great thinning’ as author Mike McCarthy terms it in his book, The Moth Snowstorm. German scientists have discovered that THREE- QUARTERS of flying insects have disappeared in 25 years. That figure was measured in nature reserves, so the picture is almost certainly worse in the countryside where habitats are not carefully nurtured.

It’s likely that widespread use of pesticides and destruction of habitat is to blame for this catastrophe. “Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study (as well as the author of the brilliant book about bumblebees, A Sting in the Tale). 

“We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.”

Why does it matter? Are you kidding? Pollination of our crops, food chains, pest control, decomposition of dead matter. What don’t they do? We NEED those little bugs, yes even the ones that sting. If you think I exaggerate, listen to the wise words of David Attenborough on invertebrates.

I should get this quote on a T-shirt.

“If we and the rest of the backboned animals were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if they were to disappear, the land's ecosystems would collapse. The soil would lose its fertility. Many of the plants would no longer be pollinated. Lots of animals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals would have nothing to eat. And our fields and pastures would be covered with dung and carrion. These small creatures are within a few inches of our feet, wherever we go on land – but often, they're disregarded. We would do very well to remember them.”

Marmalade hover fly in my back garden

Read more:

• Warning of ecological armageddon
• Alarm over decline in flying insects