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By Nick Nielsen

killing wasps only marks you for further attacks

You aren’t dreaming: Wasps more aggressive now than ever

Sep 5, 2024 | 8:00 AM

You may have noticed over the course of the last few weeks that wasps have a larger presence in your yard or at the park, and it’s a trend that’s being noticed across the Prairies.

Right now, wasps are foraging to prepare their queens for the winter, which means they are not only leaving their nests more often, but they’re also more aggressive.

James Tansey is the provincial specialist on insect/vertebrate pests for the Ministry of Agriculture, and he confirmed this is the time of year where colonies of wasps can be their largest. In the case for Saskatchewan, the two main species are the western yellow jacket and the German wasp.

“When we’re talking about the two primary yellow jacket species we have in the province, they can have colonies up to 4,000 individuals and everyone’s in high gear right now. They want to get the queens for next year ready to go and they want to get the males ready to go for the mating events and so the push is really on to gather enough materials to get them through and get them going. So as things dry down of course, there have become fewer opportunities for foraging, so you will see them concentrated in areas where you’re going to have green plants and you’re going to have animals like aphids for them to prey on.”

If you have a wasp hanging around you, your first instinct may be to swat at it or try to kill it before it can hurt you. While you may think you are protecting yourself, Tansey says you may actually be setting yourself up to be attacked by even more wasps.

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“I would advise people not to do that. They have a venom sack and that’s where they’re producing their venom and as part of that mix that causes all the pain, they also have an alarm pheromone. If you squish them, there’s the potential to release that alarm pheromone and illicit an attack response from other ones that are around.”

You can also be marked by a wasp with a pheromone that designates you as a threat to their colony, meaning that if you approach a wasp nest they may smell you and attack. With some colonies as big as 4,000, it’s important that if you do come into contact with a wasp that you wash the affected area to remove any pheromones that may trigger a wasp attack, Tansey said.

Wasps are especially attracted to protein and carbohydrates at this point in the year, so they’ll be attracted to things like garbage, old meat, or anything sweet smelling. As for when they will stop their foraging efforts and we won’t see them around, it’s going to take the first real hard frost of winter to make wasps dormant for the year.

“The only ones that survive the winter are the new queens, and they should be taking flight relatively quickly, and then they’ll mate with the males and the males will die off at that point, and those queens will try to establish new colonies for the upcoming season,” Tansey said.

While there are two species of wasps that are prevalent in Saskatchewan, we do see some others. The western yellow jacket or Vespula pensylvanica is native to Saskatchewan and has always been here, while the German Wasp or Vespula germanica originated in Germany but has since been naturalized to Saskatchewan.

In Prince Albert, the bald faced hornet or Dolichovespula maculata is quite active despite these species of wasp being most active in the southeastern United States.

“They can be really conspicuous, typically the big paper nests that you see in trees. Those ladies can be pretty big and pretty ornery. As far as their ratios and numbers, no real clear indication as to whether we’re looking at more or less than we’ve seen in previous years,” he said.

Another species of wasp that are bothering people is one that has not been in Canada for very long, the European Paper Wasp or Polistes dominula. According to Tansey, these wasps are fairly calm and a nest can even be cleared away with just a pair of work gloves, but they do pack a sting that hurts far more than other wasps.

“It’s been in the Pacific Northwest of the United States for some time and in British Columbia, but it seems to have found a foothold here. A really quick way to be able to tell that one apart from some of the other species, they’re a little bit smaller, very long legs so you’ll see these long, dangly legs hanging below them as they fly, and the nest is called an open cell nest, so it almost looks like a flower.”

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Nick.Nielsen@pattisonmedia.com