Wasps are a pain in the... wherever they sting you. We all know that. But some experts believe there are parts of the country where they’re even more destructive to wildlife than stoats and rats. Matthew Pike asks if we’ve ignored these demons of the forest for too long
Annoying. Irritating. Pesky. These are three of the tamer words we use to describe the infuriating (there’s another) experience of trying to eat a hard-earned lunch while surrounded by a swarm of yellow and black blighters. In late summer, there are certain parts of the country where, try as you might, they’re just impossible to avoid. Once you shake one off your hand, there’s another on the rim of your drink bottle. Then another gets caught in your hair, which leads to the strained, frantic buzz of a wasp trying to escape just inches from your ear. The situation is unrelenting and quickly becomes unbearable, leaving you with no choice but to finish your jam sandwich on the move. The view you were hoping to savour will have to wait until later in the year. The river into which you were hoping to dip your feet will have to continue babbling without you – not that you could hear that babble over the droning din of a million flying insects. Anyone who’s tramped through forest in the northern part of the South Island and various forests in Northland and around Auckland will have experienced this. There are parts of New Zealand where the wasp density is greater than anywhere else in the world. The beech forests covered in honeydew (a sugary liquid secreted by aphids and some insects), and kanuka and rata forests are just heaven for them. New Zealand has no native social wasps (the only native species are solitary). So over the last 70 years two invasive species – first the German wasp, then the common wasp – have become dominant, feeding on the bucket loads of honeydew found in forests and with no natural predators. The upshot is that between January and May each year, there are certain forests in which they are simply everywhere. This is more than just a nuisance. It can be dangerous, particularly for trampers who don’t stick to the paths. “The problem’s more prevalent with people who head off track,” says DOC entomologist Eric Edwards. “They’re far more likely to step on a nest or get very close to a nest. Wasps won’t build their nests on a hardened track.” No-one knows this better than keen tramper Lew Shaw. Shaw, who lives near Ashburton, in Canterbury, got attacked four years ago in Black Lizard Gully, on the slopes of Mt Somers. “I climbed up a small waterfall with my partner Maggie and we’d only been in the gully for five or 10 minutes when I decided to go through a patch of scrub. I stuck my boot on a rotten log and, before I even saw them, I felt them sting me through my polar fleece jersey.” Unbeknown to Shaw there was a wasp nest inside the log and he got stung a couple of dozen times on his body, arms and face. Shaw’s a member of the Mt Somers Walkway Society which will launch a poison bait programme this summer to ease the number of wasps in the area. But he knows there’s only so much the group can do. [caption id="attachment_3200" align="alignnone" width="1280"]


