Wasp

How to recognise it

The familiar yellow-and-black social wasp. In spring and early summer it is hunting protein - caterpillars and grubs - to feed its brood.

Mistaken for

Universally treated as vermin. For most of the season a wasp nest near the vegetable garden is removing large numbers of caterpillars daily.

What it eats

Cabbage white caterpillar, Aphids, Green shield bug, Box tree moth

How to attract it

Nothing to do - just tolerate distant nests, and keep ripe fruit picked so they do not switch to it.

Plants that help

Not recorded — the field is blank rather than guessed.

Lifecycle

Annual colony; only the new queens survive winter. They turn from hunting to sugar-seeking in late summer once the brood is finished, which is when they become a nuisance.

Months: April, May, June, July, August, September

The thing people get wrong

A wasp nest at a sensible distance is free caterpillar control until August. The reason they suddenly bother you in late summer is that the colony stops rearing young, so the workers no longer get sugar from the larvae and go looking for it on your fruit - the behaviour change is a calendar event, not aggression.