The seeds of Simon Lawton’s talk seem to have been sown last year when our Chair Elect, Martin Sharp, called on Simon’s ethical pest control company, Vermin Go, to deal with wasps in the roof of his house. Simon is a member of Shipston Beekeepers and of course a beekeeper himself, so doubtless the conversation at some point turned to the relative merits of wasps and bees.
Scroll forwards to July 2026 and I suspect we’ve all noticed increased wasp activity around our colonies. Thus it was with perfect timing that Martin and Simon’s conversation morphed into a talk by Simon on Wasps vs. Bees at our 2nd Monday meeting on 13th July. The recent rise on wasp numbers seemed to give rise to the number of members attending the meeting (I wonder why..) and 31 of us (or 32 if you include a local who popped into the hall to see what was going on and joined us for the talk!) sat down for Simon’s talk. As always Julia and Paul had provided refreshments and a special mention has to go to the delicious Victoria sponge!
Simon started with a history of bees and wasps and the 8 species of wasp that we find in the UK. The wasps we most commonly see are Vespa germanica and Vespa vulgaris. Simon reminded us that wasps includes the European Hornet, Vespa crabro and now in the UK, Vespa velutina or the Yellow Legged Asian Hornet.
He took us through some wasp facts and their (many) similarities and differences to honey bees. Wasps and bees are ‘cousins’ so it turns out a lot of what we know about bees applies to wasps. The similarities and differences were interesting; for example wasps do have a form of waggle dance but whilst bees don’t fly at night, wasps do. Simon described the many things wasps are good for (gardners’ friend) before moving on to how they affect beekeeping.
I sensed everyone leaned forward slightly when Simon started to talk about ‘control in the apiary’. Simon took us through what does, and does not (dummy wasp nests) work, considerations of traps and by-catch, and the pros and cons of wasp traps. What’s the best way to help colonies defend against bees? Fundamentally by having good, strong colonies (and don’t we hear that so often). Wasp traps are not really going to make a difference and if used, should be placed at 5m intervals around the apiary and not allowed to run out of attractant. Some of the devices for entrances are worth considering and ‘under floor’ entrances are, apparently, particularly good at confusing wasps.
Simon’s talk was fascinating and we thank him for his time.
The evening ended with the 100 club draw – and lots of conversations with Simon. And, we later heard, one of our members grabbed Simon straight after the event to clear a wasps nest from his property that evening!
A copy of Simon’s presentation is in the Members area of the website as a downloadable PDF.