Why are wasps so aggressive?
In: Biology
“People’s behaviour and choices tend to be the reason that wasps become so aggressive, whether they realise it or not. Wasps are very protective of their nests, and when a human gets too close to their abode, they feel triggered to protect the nest. You can walk right up near a wasp nest unwittingly, and get attacked.”
Source: https://www.empirepestcontrol.co.uk/why-are-wasps-so-aggressive/
They’re very territorial, can get pissy when tired like we do, and they don’t like being swatted at.
Wasps = assholes. They can sting things multiple times and they know it.
Bees = just wanna make honey. They can only sting once and will die after doing so and they know it.
If you frighten one they can mark you with a alarm pheromone which will make others attack as well. Is it defense mechanism because wasps are both predator and prey.
In late summer they become a nuisance, because they are starving and need sugar.
From the sussex wildlife trust: [https://sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/discover/in-your-garden/article/154](https://sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/discover/in-your-garden/article/154)
*In the spring, queen wasps wake from hibernation and start to build their nest, laying eggs and raising their first brood of daughters. These worker wasps cannot produce fertilised eggs, so spend their time helping their mother to expand the nest and raise more young.*
*One of their main jobs is searching for soft-bodied invertebrates to feed the developing larvae. Bizarrely, adult wasps cannot digest the food they catch because their gut is so constricted by their thin ‘wasp waists’. Instead the workers chew up the prey and feed it to the larvae. In return, the larvae produce a sugar-rich spit that the workers can drink.*
*The colony will go on expanding throughout the summer until the queen decides to produce males and new queens. After these ‘reproductives’ have left the nest, the old queen stops laying. This means the workers no longer have access to larvae. Instead, they live on the sugar produced by rotting fruit. This can be a problem because fermenting fruit contains alcohol, so wasps can become intoxicated and rather irritating.*
*They are also attracted to the abundance of sweet foods that humans provide. To a starving wasp, a jam sandwich or a can of coke is just too tempting to avoid. For this reason, wasps are generally only a nuisance in late summer. Remember that these drunken workers don’t have long to live, and as soon as the winter weather sets in the entire colony will die, leaving only the new queens to hibernate through to next year.*
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