Wasp warning after mild winter and warm spring

Pest controllers are warning that this summer could be another bad year for wasps.

Following a really mild winter and by a warm spring, condition for the insects will be ideal if we get another long hot summer.

But wildlife experts say wasps are a much maligned insect, which deserve more appreciation

• Click to watch a report by ITV News Anglia's Natalie Gray who found two wasp nests in her own attic

In 2018 there were huge numbers of wasps around the Anglia region.

Pest controllers were destroying up to 12 nests a day - in a normal year it would be just one or two.

The workers would have died off in winter while the queens hibernate.

Wasps are now building new nests - never returning to old ones which are made by the way from chewed bits of wood.

A warm and dry spring allows queens to make their nests and rear their workers more successfully.

Mild weather also makes for more abundant food sources. And if the summer is another long hot one that will usually mean lots of wasps.

Buglife is a Peterborough-based charity devoted to the conservation of all invertebrates. They work to save Britain’s rarest little animals, everything from bees to beetles and worms to woodlice.

Matt Shardlow, the chief executive of Buglife, says wasps do an awful lot of good.

There are 9,000 species of wasp in the UK and they are all doing lots and lots of different important roles.