Are Wasps Vindictive? Well That Depends

On a hot summers day in Berlin my partner and I were lunching at Brechts Steakhaus on the bank of the Spree in the city centre.

We’d ordered the Lobster Bisque, Leckeres Steak and some other amazing plates all being washed down with a lovely bottle of Bordeaux from the Chateau Nicot.

Whilst enjoying the amazing food and generally basking in the sun as we engaged in a healthy bout of people watching, we suddenly noticed a couple of cheeky wasps making a beeline for a bowl of Lemongrass Creme Brulee.

Casually I waved the cheeky blighters away, “Don’t do that!” came the reply from my beloved, “You’ll aggravate them!”, “Nah I won’t”, I bravely responded, “You just need to show them who’s the boss”.

The wasps, undeterred, hovered and took stock of the situation then decided I was just a mere human and flew back down to consume the food for which they clearly hadn’t paid for.

Again I raised my hand and waved them away clipping one of the cheeky monkeys in the process.

Again they hovered above the plate and this time put a bit more distance between my waving arms and themselves. They hovered a bit longer than the first time, it was if they were assessing the situation and planning their next move.

My partner watched in anticipation. “It’ll be fine”, I said, as I slugged some of my Bordeaux, “They’ll bugger off in a minute”.

I turned to gaze across the Spree, pointing out some interesting features when suddenly a shriek came from the other side of the table.

“Owww! FFS! I’ve just been stung!”

I turned sharply to see the two wasps manically buzzing around my partner.

“I told you not to mess with them you dick!” as she scrambled to protect herself from yet another attack by these cheeky upstarts.

I grabbed a serviette and frantically waved them away, this time they clearly had enough and were satisfied they’d sent us a message which was ‘Don’t fuck with us’.

We sat back down. My partner clearly upset with my stupidity grumbled “I told you not to mess with them, now I’ve been stung on my hand and legs!”.

I called over the waiter and asked her for a cold wet compress to put over her wounds as I explained:

“Sorry my lovester, but we’ve encountered loads of wasps when we’ve been in Spain and other countries and they’ve always buggered off when swatted!”

“Yeah well not these ones!” came the reply.

I sat there thinking about that statement and mused. ‘Are Berlin wasps different to other wasps?’

Clearly there was a waspy intelligence behind their attack, surely Berliner wasps are no more vindictive than Spanish or say Hungarian wasps? Or are they?

This question plagued me for the rest of the break, the incident also imprinted on me never to fuck around with the wasps from Berlin.

But I had to know; why was the behaviour of these Berliner wasps different to the other European wasps we’ve encountered? I decided to ask a wasp expert who replied:

“Wasps tend to be not aggressive unless provoked, but in the late summer months shifts in their diet pattern and the breakdown of the social structure of the colony changes their behaviour, additionally wasps will get angry if they feel threatened, you waving your arms around clearly provoked that anger, once wasps get angry, their defence mechanism releases pheromones that signal other wasps, so you can see why it seemed to be a coordinated attack against your partner”.

But still, it didn’t really answer my question and if anything opened up a lot more, what was so different in the diet patterns between Berliner wasps to say that of wasps from Barcelona? Is it because they’re consuming massive Steiner’s or lovely pork knuckles? And why did the wasps take a few minutes to think about their next actions?

Dr Wasp Expert didn’t know the answer to that, but added:

“Well there is a lesson to be learnt here”

Yes I replied.

“Don’t fuck about with wasps”

“Exactly”