Latest news with #wasp
BBC News
24-07-2025
- General
- BBC News
Hereford firm sees 'phenomenal' rise in callouts over wasp nests
A Herefordshire pest control expert said he had seen a large rise in callouts over wasps this year, with about 40% more than usual. Dave Atkinson, who owns ARD Pest Control in Hereford, believes the population had risen "phenomenally" this year, which included "such a mild winter and early spring".His work has escalated because of multiple wasp nests at sites, including one client who had 11 nests at their property over about four or five weeks. Mr Atkinson said the wasp increase had kept the firm very busy for the past eight experts have said very warm and dry conditions can "commonly coincide" with strong years for wasps. Mr Atkinson said in previous years "you would just get one or two nests at a site".He added for the client with 11 "you can imagine the problems that they would have had, if they had been left".The pest control expert said: "I'm getting in lots of fours, fives and sixes at clients' properties now."So as far as client callouts [are concerned] it's probably gone 40% more than usual."Asked if he had seen the wasp population increase over the years and especially in 2025 because of the heatwaves, he replied: "I would say particularly this year."This was "due to the fact that we had such a mild winter and early spring", he said. He added the "population has increased phenomenally this year, as far as the pest control service callouts" requested were concerned. Mr Atkinson stressed he dealt with a wasp nest "cautiously", adding "you use specialist chemicals that are registered for that job specifically within the health and safety industry"."Mostly it's a powder that you inject directly into the nest or in close proximity to the nest... The wasps then carry the material into the nest and [it] actually wipes the whole nest out." The UK has about 9,000 species of wasps, most of them are solitary and do not live in large colonies and these are generally not a nuisance to humans. Wasp experts say they also are an important part of our eco-system, capturing insects such as caterpillars and greenfly. Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Guardian
24-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Country diary: Komorebi is a green world within a green world
Komorebi is a Japanese noun for sunlight passing through tree leaves. It seems to mean more than the rays of light, the play of dappled shadow; more than the ephemeral quality of a green shade; it's an aesthetic experience of sunlight interacting with foliage. Today is the hottest day of a heatwave. The air is stifling. Sunlight is burning. Under a canopy of leaves, a small wing lands on the table where I'm writing this in a notebook. How did it get here? The flickering hoverflies drone before they alight on lilies and dahlias in pots. A small fountain dribbles against ferns in the rocks. There is a dense canopy of Japanese maple, plum, fatsia and clematis. Komorebi is a green world within a green world. Its direct translation suggests the sunlight 'leaks' or 'escapes' from the leaves. All these chloroplasts in leaf cells, turning light into life. For many leaves, this heat must be hotter than their optimum temperature for photosynthesis, and those in the lower layers may benefit from light escaping from above; photosynthesis removes carbon dioxide and increases transpiration (water vapour) to produce cooling. Mine and other lives are grateful for this cool sanctuary. But komorebi is not such a still, peaceful world, as evidenced by this fallen wing. It's likely that a wasp ambushed a hoverfly in the leaves overhanging the table. Starting with its head, the scimitar blades of the wasp's jaws would have dismembered the hoverfly, discarding the legs and wings with surgical precision, the wasp returning to the nest to feed the chewed-up, protein-packed hoverfly to the larvae. What they are fed may determine their sex and caste – wasp destiny shaped by the beautifully banded bodies of hoverflies. This tiny wing is all that's left of the aerial magic trick of motionlessness; it's like a flake of celluloid film containing the places, lives and times composed of this green light of leaves. More importantly, komorebi is an experience life shares, a mood not described by just what it looks like or what it does. This heatwave is a sign of the coming climate; for komorebi, we need more foliage on all ecological levels. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
Irish Times
19-07-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Eye on Nature: ‘This huge wasp landed on my son'
While on holiday in Croatia in early July this landed on my small son as we walked along the street. It flew off again almost immediately, but he was a bit freaked out. It was huge – almost two inches long. What was it? A Morrissey, Dublin That was scary, right enough. It is the mammoth wasp – Megascolia maculata – Europe's biggest wasp. The female is larger than the male with a body length up to 50mm, males are only 20mm in size. This is a solitary species of wasp. The female lays an egg in the larva of the Rhinoceros beetle and parasitizes it. It then hatches out and feeds on the larva. It develops over the winter in the surrounding soil and emerges the following summer. It visits flowers for nectar as an adult before mating and laying eggs again. Neither the wasp nor the Rhinoceros beetle occur in Ireland. Small Magpie moth seen in Dublin and Co Clare This small moth was seen by Roisin Sheerin on the ceiling of her home in Harold's Cross in Dublin and by Enda Scanlon on a compactor at work in Ennis Co Clare. Both were curious to know what it was. It is a Small Magpie moth. Moths are divided into two groups – macro-moths, the large ones and micro-moths which have a forewing length of 10mm or less. Many moth books only cover the macro-moths so finding out about micros can be more difficult. The Small Magpie is a micro-moth – a common enough species, whose larvae feed on mint and thyme. It is a day-flying species, visiting flowers for nectar and in the hope of meeting members of the opposite sex – considering them as a singles bar, as it were. READ MORE Great Grey Slug. Photograph: Michael Hill We awoke recently to find this slug at the edge of the bed, some 20 feet from an open window. It had left a gluttonous trail across the carpet. We have a large Hosta on the patio but surely 'indoors' would not normally be attractive? I read that broken eggshells or beer in a saucer are an effective deterrent. (More worryingly, my wife said that if it features in our bed, she'll be gone!) Any advice would be welcome. Michael Hill I can offer advice about the slug (you will have to try a different column for matrimonial guidance). This is the voracious Great Grey slug – Limax maximus, sometimes called the Leopard slug. Hosta plants are seemingly a magnet for slugs of various species – why people who don't like slugs grow them is a mystery to me. But slugs don't eat carpets, so it hardly was a gluttonous trail. It may boil down to a choice between the missus and the Hosta, as broken eggshells and saucers of beer – while they deter slugs – are not nice in the bedroom. Cuttlefish on Mweenish Island. Photograph: Philip Berman On Trá Mhór on Mweenish Island, near Carna, we saw dozens of these cuttlefish bones washed up in the sand. In 20 years walking this beach I've never seen so many. What might the explanation be? Philip Berman Cuttlefish are molluscs and these bones are their internal skeleton. They have many tiny holes, which fill with gas and help them to float. They live for two years and die after spawning. It must have been a good breeding year for them this year. Greylag gosling in Ballynahinch. Photograph: Karin Joyce I saw this bird on the greenway near Ballynahinch in Galway. What goose or duck will it be when grown up? Karin Joyce, Co Galway This is a young Greylag Goose. True wild Greylag Geese are migratory and breed in Iceland, visiting us in winter, but escaped domestic Greylag Geese breed here and produce lovely little goslings like this. Please submit your nature query, observation, or photo, with a location, via or by email to weekend@
CTV News
15-07-2025
- CTV News
Midhurst park closed for safety after insect infestation discovered
Yellow caution tape surrounds a park in Springwater on Monday for the safety of all park users, the Township advises. Cherry Park on Idlewood Drive in Midhurst is closed to the public because of a possible infestation. In a Facebook post, the Township said it received a report about a possible stinging insect next at the park near the playground area. 'Upon inspection, staff identified a high volume of wasp or hornet-like insects,' the Township explained. 'Likely due to a disturbed ground nest.' The closure is in effect until further notice. The public is advised to avoid the area until it's deemed safe.
ABC News
24-06-2025
- Science
- ABC News
World's only known eyeless wasp discovered mummified in Nullarbor cave
Jess Marsh had spent 45 minutes crawling and twisting through the claustrophobic limestone tunnels of the Nullarbor Plain when she first saw it. Perched on the wall of a cave chamber was the almost perfect mummified remains of small, reddish wasp about 2 centimetres long with translucent wings. Its stand-out feature? It had no eyes. "This wasp is the only wasp in the world that is known to have adapted like that to a cave life," said Dr Marsh, an entomologist and arachnologist — an insect and spider expert — at the University of Adelaide. "The first specimen was actually climbing up the wall of the cave ... like they'd been freeze-dried." The preserved insect, yet to be taxonomically described, was one of the crowning discoveries from a research expedition in April with cavers from the Australian Speleological Federation (ASF). Eleven caves on the Western Australia side of the 200,000 square kilometre Nullarbor region were examined in a biological survey, funded by the Australian Research Council and the Hermon Slade Foundation. The caves were selected based on previous sightings of underground critters by cave-exploring citizen scientists. ASF president Andrew Stempel said the trip, which found specimens at five of the sites, had been an "incredible" collaboration connecting caver knowledge with expert scientists. "It took many years and many cavers and a lot of hard yards," he said. The wasp was found in a cave that contains passages that run for about 10 kilometres, which had previously been mapped out by scientists. It wasn't the only remains the researchers found either. The cave was full of thousands of mummified bodies of spiders, cockroaches, centipedes and other insects, preserved thanks to the salty cave conditions. Dr Marsh said when she first locked eyes on the site she was captured by its otherworldly beauty. "It's not like anything I've ever seen before," she said. "[It had] the most amazing cave decorations I've ever seen, so stalactites, stalagmites and huge long salt straws [thin pillars of salt that sway in the cave breeze]. No living critters remain because of some sort of invertebrate world-ending cataclysm that occurred an unknown number of years ago. What excited Dr Marsh was the potential relationship between the blind arachnids and the wasp, which she thought was from the spider-hunting family called Pompilidae. "It's a really interesting story if they've both evolved to a cave-adapted lifestyle where they've lost their eyes independently but are linked through parasitism," she said. Matt Shaw, a collection manager at the Australian Museum and not part of the recent expedition, said finding a wasp and spiders with regressed features was fantastic for science. "Because as [Charles] Darwin pointed out ... regressed animals including cave animals were an important source of evidence for understanding evolution," he said. The exact age of the invertebrates in the mummy mausoleum was yet to be analysed, but Dr Marsh said they were so well preserved "they could have died yesterday". Elsewhere on the trip, the expedition found some creatures that were still kicking, including two species of eyeless spiders. Both could fill up the palm of your hand but are incredibly different. One, which hangs underneath a web weaved between rocks is believed to be from the genus Tartarus, named after the prison for titans in Greek mythology. The second is large, hairy and probably part of the Troglodiplura genus but distantly related to tarantulas, funnel webs and trapdoor spiders. "We don't know yet if it's a new species or if it's one of the already described ones," Dr Marsh said. There are five spiders in Troglodiplura, including four that were described only a few years ago from tiny fragments found in museum collections. Both Tartarus and Troglodiplura spiders have only been found on the Nullarbor. And there is a belief among arachnologists that some Nullarbor spider species may only be found in single caves rather than multiple sites. Dr Marsh said the latest trip, along with other research, challenged the idea the region was not particularly special for biodiversity. "The number and the diversity of species that may be surviving and living in the caves on the Nullarbor is actually much higher than we we initially thought," she said. With the growing knowledge of underground species comes a greater awareness of potential threats. In caves accessible to mammals, Dr Marsh said invasive foxes proposed a big threat to blind spiders. A site with living arachnids from the most recent trip had fox scat that contained spider fangs. "The risk of extinction for a lot of those [underground] species through development, impact by humans, changes to water movement across the landscape ... is really very high," she said. While the South Australia side of the Nullarbor is in the process of being made a World Heritage site, the WA side is not. All of the recent cave surveys were done within an area ear-marked for the largest proposed green energy project in Australia. The 70 gigawatt Western Green Energy Hub would see about 3,000 turbines and six million solar panels installed across 20,000sqkm of land. The project has come under scrutiny from cavers concerned about potential impacts to the unique cave systems. Project chief executive Raymond Macdonald said less than 5 per cent of the total surface area would be impacted, and that the company was currently mapping a directory of caves, sink holes and karst feature locations. "This new accuracy will ensure that significant features are totally avoided when selecting infrastructure locations," he said. The project's management is currently in discussion with state and federal regulators about what environmental studies will be needed as the project proposal is reviewed. An Indigenous land-use agreement is also being negotiated with the area's Traditional Owners, the Mirning. A WA Mirning People Aboriginal Corporation spokesperson said the whole ecosystem in the Nullarbor was significant. "Our priority is always to protect the environment as a whole, while placing particular emphasis on rare and endangered species," they said.
