Today is Eat Outside Day, which sounds like a great idea. Until you actually try to eat outside and realize that there are suddenly a lot of uninvited guests looking to share your food. Wasps seem to suddenly be everywhere this time of year.
It seems a bit strange. You can go all summer, and hardly see any around, then as we get toward the end of August, they seem to be everywhere. Last weekend was the first time all summer we brought out the wasp traps. We have a couple of those things that look like little short bottles with a hole in the base. You add some sugary liquid to the bottom, hang them up and it usually doesn’t take long for them to start filling with wasps, especially this time of year.
But why now? They want some sugar.
Apparently, according people who study these things, the more social wasps, like yellowjackets, live in fairly large colonies. Their job through the spring is to make more wasps. They build a nest, lay eggs, and the workers go to work feeding the young. They roam around looking for sources of protein, which they take home to the larvae. The larvae eat the protein and secrete a sweet, sticky substance the worker wasps eat for most of the summer.
But as the end of summer approaches, there are fewer baby wasps. The feeding the young part of the job is pretty much over for the workers, but they’re left with a serious sugar addiction and no baby wasps to get their fix from. Suddenly, they need a sugar fix, and since they can’t get it from their own young, they come after us. Or at least our food and drinks.
Which explains why we seem to see more of them hanging around this time of year. They are little sugar junkies and we’ve got what they’re craving.
So while Eat Outside Day sounds like a great idea this time of year, maybe they could move it a little earlier in the summer. Or maybe we could just set a place for the wasps. They’re going to show up anyway.