On Handling Wasps
Many a picnic or outdoor café lunch has been upset by the presence of yellow-jacketed insects people commonly refer to as “bees.” The kind of “bees” that most often descend on our hot dogs, tortes, and soft drinks are called, appropriately enough, “social wasps” or “picnic wasps.” Wasps in the species Vespula are about 5/8 of an inch in length at maturity. When no picnics are scheduled, they can be seen feeding on fallen, decaying fruit. They have an effective, potent driller at the tip of the abdomen and a quick temper.
According to the World Book Encyclopedia, wasps do far more good than harm. They help keep the balance of nature by destroying large numbers of insects, spiders, beetles, ants, and caterpillars that are harmful to crops and trees. Their stingers, present only in females, have evolved as a defense against nest invaders and as a strategy to paralyze prey for food. Wasps have rights within the created scheme of things; they perform good services and function well in a remarkably organized society.
We can learn much from them, from their industry, efficiency, and social responsibility. Their remarkable sense of duty is deeply ingrained and all-consuming.
But wasps sting! And stings not only hurt, but are sometimes fatal. So, the question arises about how to deal with these beneficial, formidable yellow jackets and their fixed, social-helpfulness creed.
There seems to be no completely satisfactory way to deal them. Without attempting to be exhaustive, I shall describe certain ways people respond to these hated picnic crashers.
Some people I’ve observed can continue to munch a hot dog and calmly drink a coke in their presence. Others, once wasps show up, start to flail away, violently shooing and swatting at them. For still others, especially those for whom stings are life-threatening, the only good wasp is a dead wasp.
On a hot day in Ann Arbor when I was in graduate school, all the windows in our classroom in Angell Hall were wide open. Professor Irving Copi, the world-famous logician, was lecturing at a podium that stood on a slightly raised platform. Just as he got deeply into his difficult subject, “Logic and Scientific Method,” a wasp entered the room. We all kept track of it as it flew gracefully around, finally targeting our professor. Once Copi understood the wasp’s aim, he changed quickly from lecturer to warrior. He rolled up his precious logic notes into a club-like weapon, explaining to the class as he went after the striped invader that it was “either kill or be killed.” As he swung at the wasp, Copi backed off the platform, losing his composure for a second. In no time, however, he took the wasp out, squashed it triumphantly on the floor, unrolled his notes, and resumed his profound analysis of argumentation. Though some of us knew that, in the heat of battle, he had committed the fallacy of bifurcation (the fallacy of claiming that the two alternatives presented exhaust all of the possible options, e.g., “America, love it or leave it”), it was not the time to bring it up!
But there are kinder approaches. On a beautiful summer day in Småland, Sweden, my relatives treated my son, Paul, and me to some coffee and torte at an outdoor café near a lake. No sooner had our food arrived, than some wasps decided to assert their native rights and share our table. Pesky and hungry, they began to indulge our calorie-loaded pastries. My “cousin” rose to the occasion, cut off a nice piece of torte, put it on an extra plate, and set it on the ground alongside our table. “Det här är för er.” (This is for you.) The wasps, who evidently did not understand, continued to sample the delicacies on the table. No second-class status for them! We finished our coffee quickly and carefully in their company.
Just as thoughtful and respectful of wasps was the late theology Professor, Paul Tillich. His assistant, my former teacher, Walter Leibrecht, tells the story. Tillich was spending some days at Leibrecht’s summer place. One morning, Leibrecht observed Tillich coming down from an upstairs bedroom with a folded handkerchief cupped in his hands. “What have you there, Paul?” he asked. “Oh, it’s really nothing,” responded Tillich. Going to the door, he cautiously released the contents. “Paul, what in the world was that?” Leibrecht persisted. “Just the wasp that was circling my room,” Tillich replied.
I’ve captured a few troublesome wasps myself in water glasses. I put the empty glass over the wasp as it rests on the wall, table, or other flat surface. Once the wasp is within the glass, I slide a thin piece of cardboard between the glass and that surface. It’s at that point that an ethical dilemma occurs — should I, with my Swedish relatives and Tillich, have respect for all life or, on the other hand with Copi, insure that the captured wasp will never sting again?
There is also the moving approach, useful when there is absolutely no time for cool, calm, ethical deliberation. Once, while picking wild raspberries, I happened to set foot on a ground wasp nest. The quiet serenity of the berry patch, along with my peaceful spirit, was instantaneously disturbed. In a moment the area was alive with hundreds of really steamed, wildly buzzing, yellow-jackets. Unmindful of the uneven terrain, logs and brush, berries and pails, and all else, I ran for dear life. I was punished for my mindless invasion of their abode by several wasps that flew faster than I could run.
As in many other situations in life, one strategy does not fit all occasions. Generally, I’d say, one needs to be clear on the point that wasps attack only when provoked, when their livelihood or territory have been trespassed. Thus, whenever possible, allow them the space and opportunity to perform their good ecological services.
Of course, the problem comes when their space and your space overlap — when they have a nest where you must walk, when they build a hive on the eaves of your house or garage, when you want to drink the pop they are sipping, and so forth. The best advice for times of conflict, when you have encroached on their territory and they are in an attack mode, is to counter with the best weapons you can get your hands on, trusting that some depletion of the number of these magnificent social servants will not disturb God’s well-balanced scheme of things.