EVERYBODY loves bees. They are celebrated for their glorious honey, cooperative work ethic and commercially valuable pollination services. In a 2019 survey, 55 per cent of respondents chose bees as the species they most wanted to save, above the likes of elephants and tigers. How differently we see wasps. These most unwelcome picnic guests have been reviled for millennia. Ancient Greek essayist Plutarch described wasps as degenerate bees. The very word "waspish" summons up ideas of irritability, implying they are quick to anger, spiteful and vindictive. And that's just the regular wasp or yellow jacket. Our attitudes to the largest wasp species, hornets, are even more negative. The tabloids hawk horror stories about how the invasive Asian hornet, Vespa velutina, threatens honey production and native pollinators in the UK. Meanwhile, persecution of the huge but docile European hornet, Vespa crabro, continues, fuelled by fear and ignorance, even though its numbers are declining. Few people seem to care.
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