Today I got around to destroy 4 “German paper wasp”, (Polistes gallicus)nests. For some time, I wanted to do so, especially, that last year, the council still offered the removal of nests for free and encouraged citizen to do so.
For this whole season, all I saw was German wasps, everywhere.
I asked my neighbor if he also noticed that there are no bees in his fruit trees. He lives about 300m as the crow flies. He said no and also did not notice many German wasps.
I had altogether 6 nests under my roof, 2 biggish ones( around 200mmand bigger) and 4 smaller ones. The two remaining nest will be destroyed in the next 2-3 days.
However, what I instantly noticed is the heightened bee activity in my garden. I have about 2500qm mainly wild garden and virtually within 2-3 hours after I destroyed the nests, no more wasps, but bees everywhere. It is difficult to quantify but I would say the bee activity has multiplied by five and is again at a level of previous years.
In years gone by I always welcomed our indigenous paper wasps to build there nests and had some pretty impressive ones. Those indigenous Polistes scanned the lawn and herb garden, but seem to never interfere with the bee population.
This year I only saw two indigenous Polistes workers flying around and until today noticeably very few honey and wild bees. I am also very interested in Rober flies, which I have not seen so far in the garden.
Is it possible that the invasive European Wasps have such a dramatic and devastating impact on the indigenous insect fauna, and of what consequence would that be commercially ?
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