BY ROGER WATSON

I have had a lifelong fear of wasps. I’m not sure where this unusually intense fear originated. Interestingly, it took many years before I was actually stung by one, and it turned out to be a minor event, like a needle prick. Although I have yet to be stung by a bee, they surprisingly don’t instil the same sense of panic in me.

I still find it very hard to relax if I’m in the same room as a wasp, and having one in a sealed rail carriage can ruin my journey. My usual reaction to being near a wasp was to dispatch it as quickly as possible with a newspaper or a direct hit with fly spray. I say “was” because I now look at these little yellow-and-black blighters with a kinder perspective.

Despite having a degree in biological sciences, which included zoology, I spent most of my life thinking that wasps were utterly useless creatures, sent here simply to menace faint-hearted people like me. But of course, if they exist, whether by evolution or design, they must have some purpose—and, it turns out, they do. Wasps are apex predators of creepy crawlies we don’t want in our gardens, and they also pollinate plants. So, move over bees—your stripy cousins can do what you do too.

But my respect for wasps has grown recently due to the damage they’re doing to my wooden furniture. Allow me to explain…

Earlier this year, my wife and I bought a lodge in North Yorkshire. Our first concern was to buy some decent furniture for the decking, and we chose teak. It could have come from a place called Costa Fortune, given the price; in fact, it came from Indonesia.

With the promise of virtual indestructibility against the elements, natural oils that mean it requires no treatment, and its stunning elegance, we were hooked. I recall attending a garden party hosted by a Thai MP near Chiang Mai. She had recently hosted the Miss Thailand contestants and had a very nice photo album from that evening on display, which brightened an otherwise dull event. She asked if I would like to see her house, and what she showed me was an enormous structure built entirely of teak. It was resistant to the assaults of the monsoon and extreme humidity. Most importantly, it was also resistant to termites—the scourge of wooden house owners. We aren’t prone to termites in North Yorkshire, but with global warming being a real and present danger, we thought “better safe than sorry.”

The furniture arrived on pallets and had to sit on our drive for several days until one of my daughter’s boyfriends could load them into his plumber’s van and transport them to the lodge. Assembly took place over several visits by one of my sons and me until, finally, there on the decking sat our six-seater (expandable to ten) teak table and chairs. So far, so good.

Over the worst of the winter, despite being weatherproof, we decided to cover the furniture. When we arrived one sunny weekend and removed the cover, a small wasp “bike” (sometimes spelled “byke”) rolled out—in effect, a miniature wasp nest. A regular feature of my childhood, we used to find them in outhouses and even in wardrobes from time to time. These nests contained no wasps, and the story went that they often built these for practice. Nobody seems to know for sure. Certainly, there were no wasps in the one we saw. Another childhood memory related to wasp bikes was investigating a scraping sound coming from a wooden fence post in a country lane, only to discover that a wasp was responsible. This was the source of the wood shavings that wasp bikes are made from.

^{The Evidence}

We thought nothing of our little find, not even considering the source of the wood shavings that the wasps used to construct the bike. That is, until another sunny weekend recently. Armed with gin and tonics, we retired to the decking and noted that the edges of the table had what appeared to be shallow gouges all around. Random patches of gouging were evident across the surface of the table and on the arms of the chairs. Then one of the culprits arrived—a lone wasp landed and began scraping away in front of us.

It was so engrossed in its business of slowly robbing me of my expensive pride and joy that I was able to almost touch it before it took off to deliver its spoils to a nearby nest before returning to carry on thieving from me. I could have squashed the little devil with ease, but something stopped me. It clearly meant me no harm. On closer inspection, I saw that it was making small damp patches wherever it was scraping, presumably to soften the wood before removing it.

^{The Culprit}

I thought, “What the hell?” These little fellows need a place to live, and they’ve found a plentiful source of free wood that, most of the time, they can scrape away at undisturbed. The table will outlive me, even with their nefarious industry. They do more good than harm, which is more than most of us can claim. So, I concluded, “Knock yourselves out, little fellas.” Apart from anything else, the wasps in our part of North Yorkshire will have the only termite-resistant nests for miles.

Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.