Delicious, this coke on the terrace… but the wasp thinks so too

Wasps on the terrace, end of October. Photo: Twitter / Erica van Leeuwen

VORDEN – It’s unusually hot for this time of year. And when the sun is shining, we look for a terrace more quickly. But what are all these wasps doing at the end of October? A video of a restaurant visitor filming a swarm of wasps caught my attention on Twitter.

There’s nothing more annoying than being bothered by wasps while enjoying a coke and a nice lunch outside. And it’s not fun for the staff either. “We still suffer from it, we only have wasp hunters to combat it,” says an employee of the Keuken van Hackfort restaurant in Vorden.

The director of the video was sitting on the terrace of this restaurant.

There’s not much you can do about the nuisance, says the employee. “When people book or come to see us, we advise them to sit inside if they want a bite to eat. Most people do too, but some are stubborn and sit outside.”

And they also understand it in Vorden. “It’s also good weather. It’s a good time for us.”

The wasps of the Vordense terrace:

Why are there still wasps today? More and more wasp colonies are going through winter due to climate change, says Arnold van Vliet of Wageningen University. “We had an early start to the wasp season, it’s one of the hottest years on record. The first nests were ready early,” he said on Friday. Radio Gelderland.

“If you sit on the terrace, they come to your quarters to find sweets. They may be workers who are unemployed because the nest is finished during the summer months. There has been no frost so they are not dead yet.” that they are second generation wasps. Queens emerging from the nest in late summer normally go into hibernation. But we see them starting a new nest the same year.

“It must be really freezing”

According to Van Vliet, it really has to freeze for the workers to die. “When winter sets in, the wasps are expected to be gone. But if it stays warm, some wasp nests might remain active through the winter.”

The biologist saw years ago that wasp nests no longer die in winter. Because it is warmer, wasps can easily feed in mild winters and therefore survive. It refers to “megan’s nests in Australia and New Zealand”, with wasp species also present in our country.

Van Vliet already told the story in 2016 LIT: “In New Zealand (…) it is only a few degrees warmer in winter. There you see that an entire colony survives, and that after the winter there is not one but four queens in a nest.”

Incidentally, such nests have not yet been observed in our country.

The larvae reward the workers

A relatively warm winter also makes it easier for other insects to survive. The wasp takes advantage of this in turn: it eats the other insects. You can see on the terrace how far people are, says Van Vliet Broadcast Gelderland. “If they come to your plate for meat, they get wasp food for the larvae in the nest. If they go for soft drinks, the wasps want food for themselves.”

It’s a reward system. The biologist: “If the workers feed the larvae, they get sweetener in return. The wasps feed on it. When the larvae are fully developed, the wasps have to look for a replacement. So soft drink.”

Now that the wasps occupy us all year round, this also has consequences for the mowing of verges and public gardens, according to the biologist from Wageningen. “There must be enough nectar for the wasps. The managers could decide not to mow everything in the fall but to leave flowers.”

Advice against wasps

In the meantime, the wasps continue to infest us. There is a lot of advice on the Internet, but also nonsense. In this video we list facts and fables.

Also see: Record breaking, hottest October 28 ever