Tag Archives: Wasps

What to do if you have beewolves nesting in your garden? Leave them alone!

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Earlier today we had a message from the owner of the AirBnB that we are staying in to let us know that he’s expecting a guy to come and spray pesticide around the house to kill the ‘invasive’ beewolves. The European beewolf (Philanthus triangulum) is a type of wasp in the family Crabronidae that is only distantly related to the typical wasps that you find trying to share your barbecue and beer. As its name suggests, it preys upon bees, but it’s actually a pollinator itself and visits a range of flowers.

I immediately got back to our host and pointed out that beewolves are gentle insects, completely harmless, and less dangerous than the pesticide the company would use to kill them, and that he was wasting his money. He informed us that the pest control company had told him that he needed to control them other wise he’d be ‘over-run’ with them next year!

When I explained to him that this was nonsense, and that the beewolves cause no damage to people or property, he promised to get back to the company to cancel the order, and thanked me for the information. I’m hoping that I’ve made a convert to the cause of insect conservation!

It maddens me that pest control companies are preying on people’s fear of insects to make money in this way. Insects are subjected to enough assaults by human activities without making up spurious reasons for poisoning them.

So if you are lucky enough to have beewolves in your garden, please treat them with respect and watch their fascinating behaviour:

Identifying British ichneumonid wasps: an introductory guide from the NHM

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Tanzania ichneumonid P1000757

The ichneumonid wasps (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) are a fantastically diverse group of insects that mostly share a similar parasitic life history: they lay their eggs in or on a host insect.  Around 24,000 species have been described, and estimates for their full diversity range between 60,000 and 100,000 species.

In Britain there are approximately 2,500 species, almost 10 times our bee diversity. Many species visit flowers, particularly umbellifers, and they can therefore be quite significant (though under-studied) pollinators of things like Wild Carrot (Daucus carota) and its relatives.

With so many species to deal with, identifying ichneumonids can be a daunting task. However the Natural History Museum (London) has produced a free beginner’s guide to identifying them – here’s a link to it.

Although it only covers 22 commonly encountered species (i.e. less than one hundredth of Britain’s species diversity) it’s nonetheless a useful introduction to a fascinating group. However you’ll not be able to identify the species pictured above – I photographed that in Tanzania a few years ago!