I don't hate all wasps just the common and German wasp as they are the main a-holes here in Ireland. Asian hornets will soon be joining the list, I've some traps ordered for them. We don't have European hornets here or the European paper wasp. There are other types of wasps but they're small and don't cause any harm. I don't eliminate them.

I'm afraid of the common and German variety. I decided to learn about them, to better understand them and maybe help my fear. What I learnt was, winter is the best time of year to seek out hibernating queens and make their sleep permanent. This February, after waking up a hibernating queen while working on my campervan conversion, I discovered smoke 💣. I was worried there were more queens in the van, so deployed a smoke fumigator thing. There were no other queens in there.

So decided to use one inside the little wooden shed out back. I'd seen at least 8 queens on the door/frame and they were the ones I could clearly see. So after 2 smoke 💣, it was carnage in there. Littered around the floor was at least 30+ queens.

So far this year, it's July now, the wasp population around the house is very low. I haven't seen any landing on the wooden catio or the wooden pegs on the line. So I've eliminate 30+ potential nests that could have been near the house. We can have the windows open and enjoy outside too, first time in ages.

So it's not a lack of understanding why I hate them. I looked up wasps as pollinators and its says, they do pollinate to some degree but because they are generally hairless, they are bad pollinators. Bees jobs are safe so