Talk - Bees and Wasps

I contact Mike Edwards, who is giving a talk tonight in Chailey Village Hall about bees and wasps, to find out more about these remarkable animals. If someone’s giving a talk, you can tell if it’s going to be interesting by having a quick chat with them. Could he tell me some surprising things about these insects?

He’s on the case right away. “There are 600 different species of bees and wasps in the UK,” he enthuses, “ranging from 2mm long to 3cm long… Cuckoo bees lay their eggs in other species’ nests… Wasps don’t kill their prey. They paralyse it, and lay their larvae in it, after which it is eaten alive from the inside out… Most bees and wasps are yellow or orange and black but Crisis wasps are metallic green… Bees and wasps are closely related - they have a common ancestor: they are both related to ichneumon wasps… Bees are just hairy wasps, basically, designed to pick up pollen: they’ve given up hunting for meat and have gone vegetarian… When the queen wasp dies at the end of the season, usually in late summer and autumn, anarchy ensues, as the workers are left to their own devices… This is when you are most likely to be stung, though wasps only sting you if they’re too interested in the sweet stuff they’re after, and they don’t notice you until you’re too close…” He’d be happy to go on for hours, I sense, but I stop him. It will, I realise, be an interesting talk. AG