25-09 - Flipbook - Page 89
September
August 2025
This is a worker wasp. She is looking for food to feed to her sibling larvae in her mother's papery-looking nest. Is she carving off a lump of ham, gathering a dollop of jam or slurping at
your sugary drink? Watch what she is eating because this gives you a clue to what your
wasp offering will be. She is so focused on her task that she won't notice you watching.
3. Make a wasp-offering to keep her from bothering you
Before you know it, she's off with jaws full of jam or a hunk of ham. She might zigzag away
from your table 3 a sign that she is reorientating for a reliable return. Once landmarks are
mapped, she will fly straight and fast. If you followed her, she would lead you to her nest.
But you are better off using your time to prepare your wasp offering, because she's going to
come back soon. Your offering should be a portion of whatever she harvested from your
plate. You can move it slightly away from the rest of your food. If you let her have her share,
you too can dine in peace.
You can gradually move your wasp offering further away from you. Wasp offerings are welltested techniques around the world, whether you're looking to track down a wasp nest to
eat, or keep customers unbothered by wasps at an outdoor restaurant.
Happily, your picnic friend is unlikely to bring a swarm of wasps to your table, because social wasps are poor recruiters. This makes sense because wasp food (insects, carrion) is usually a scattered, short-lived resource. One caterpillar doesn't necessarily mean there's a
huge patch of them, for example.
This contrasts with honeybees, for which there has been strong natural selection for the evolution of a communication system (waggle dance) to recruit many foragers to a patch of
flowers.
