Some Positive PR for the Wasps

Most of us will admit to tolerating honeybees. This may have to do with the fact that most of us know that honeybees produce honey. Also, honeybees are not all that prevalent in our personal space and tend to be found out in the meadow, possibly in a hollow log or fighting off a bear on the end of a balloon. One can wax nostalgic over honeybees.

While on vacation last summer we were invited to sign a petition on behalf of honey bees. Hive failure is a problem big enough to make it into international media on a semi-regular basis. Note that in the last 6 months or so someone has actually published the belief, and some proof, that hive failure is related to pesticide use. This may bode well for the honeybee. It seems someone, somewhere, is facing the facts instead of maundering on about some hypothetical suber-bee-flu.

Wasps, though, ahhhh, wasps. Take an informal poll and find out A) how many people actually like wasps and B) how many have never asked the question, Would we not be better off WITHOUT wasps?

You have to figure that wasps, along with skunks, rate high on the list of animals no one wants to deal with, ever. In fact, if you google wasps ontario your first page will be filled with wasp extermination offers including, I might add, some nice descriptions of wasps. Futher investigation will bear out the notion that, really, what one wants to know, when googling the word wasp, is how to get rid of them. Even the skunks get better PR.

So, what good are wasps?

Well, figure that about 80% of multi-cellular life on Earth is of the insect variety. 800,000 species in fact. Of this 120,000 count as wasps and bees. Of that number, about 15,000 sting. Of that, about 3 are the ones we're noticing: the yellow-jacket, the paper wasp and the hornet and of THOSE what we're really complaining about the yellow-jacket.

Meanwhile, the other 14,999, call it 14,996 to be safe, species of stinging wasp or bee are either out there making honey as best they can given the pesticides or pollinating or feeding on the larvae of other insects or, in some cases, on adult other insects. Ahah! This is what the wasps do. They kill pests without the need for pesticides. In fact, some farmers out there actually encourage wasps as a means of crop pest control. Which means that wiping out the wasps would not be the brightest idea mankind ever had and likely be detrimental to a secure source of honey in the future.

Now the yellow-jacket on the other hand, would appear to have evolved, or developed, a keen sense of where the living is easy. Sure, it could go out there and prey on larvae and insects but it seems to have occurred to the species that snitching bits of hamburger, hot dog and ham works just as well. Try leaving some ham out in late August and watch what happens. The wasp will snip off a tidy little piece with her mandibles and fly away happy. She'd prefer not to fly far which is why you'll find yellow-jackets building nests under your deck.

This will give you a chance to look like an urban hero and also deploy a skill set not unlike those used by elite warriors in an effort not to get stung. Arguably, even the yellow-jacket has its uses.


http://canadianbiodiversity.mcgill.ca/english/species/insects/hemipterahymenoptera.htm

http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/vespids/intro.html

http://www.pollinator.ca/canpolin/beesandwasps.html

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/wasp/

http://removeandreplace.com/2013/05/07/how-to-easily-make-a-beehive-in-a-jar-backyard-project-diy/

The Weird Thing About the Iris

 Cast your mind back, waaaay back, to the Spring of 2012.

It was uncommonly dry that spring. In fact, it heralded a drought that persisted right through into 2013. The hay crop that year was abysmal. Farmers sold off livestock. Renfrew County called a Class 3 drought and plowed over its dismal corn crops. For the first time in living memory, the spring was not at all green.

fiddleheads

red admiral buterfly

The snow melted on time. The weather grew warmer; however, the land did not even approximate lush. Leaves were smaller than usual, blossoms were later than usual. The spring green showed against a vast wash of late autumn brown. Both pictures here were taken on May 15th 2012. You can contrast them with looking at wet spring growth, such as we will see if it ever warms up. The spring will be late this year but for a completely different reason than in 2012.

violet and woodland fern

 Some things have to happen in the spring. The deciduous trees leaf out. The fruit trees blossom. Bees pollinate. Life wakes up from the long sleep and gets on with growing and procreating and producing. Crocus, daffodil, tulip and iris are all spring flowers, all typically flowered and finished by mid-May at the latest.

watercress

Spring flowers, if you look closely at them, have in common thick leaves. These leaves snap quite easily which make the flowers delicate. The colour of the flowers is bright, this being attractive to bees and other pollinators. All are grown from a bulb. When they have finished flowering they photosynthesize and feed the bulb so that it can hunker down and endure another winter. Eventually the leaves wither off and by June you have no more traces of most spring flowers in the garden

In 2012 spring came. The iris leafed out as iris does and then could not help but notice that the rain was not coming. This clearly posed a bit of a dilemma for the iris. It began to wither.

What is interesting is the way in which it withered. Large beads of water formed inside the leaf. The cell structure of the leaf broke down so that the water in the leaf could feed the bulb. In essence, the plant began to consume itself. That is the reason for the thick green spring leaves. There is a lot of water stored in them.

The plant did this slowly
over the course of 3 weeks. It did not immediately turn brown. It became thin as the water was drawn out of the leaf and then, at last, it began to turn brown and curly. Presumably, so long as the leaf was green it contained chloroplasts and could feed from the sunlight.

Plants such as cacti and jade are called succulents. This means that their leaves store water so that the plant can go for a long time between rainfalls. It seems that the iris also is a succulent, which is kind of cool if you consider that it blooms during what is typically the wettest part of the year.

Even the spring of 2012 contained some rain. Also, since this particular iris was in our front garden, we watered it from time to time. The water reversed the damage to the leaves. No new ones sprouted. Rather, the blisters healed and those bits that were not completely sere fleshed out again. In time the iris bloomed and the spring of 2013 showed that it had survived the drought of 2012.

Others things were not so lucky. The apple harvest in the fall of 2012 was virtually non-existent. This was a combination of drought and also a late frost, which affected both the blossoms and the pollinators.

 If you look at the coniferous trees in the ditches along the roads you will see that many of them are burnt. True, conifers usually look brown-ish at this time of the year and true, salt damage to trees is common, but also you are seeing the effects of two abnormally dry and hot summers.

The climate around you is changing. It is adapting where it can and it will, of course, die off where it can't. lose study shows survival mechanisms at work, such as the one concerning the weird thing about the iris.

Here as a link to the Ministry of Natural Resources for Ontario and what is has to say concerning drought in Ontario.
http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/Business/Water/2ColumnSubPage/STEL02_165451.html