You can probably count on one hand the number of wasps you have seen this summer which is good news for people who have a phobia of wasps, but not such good news for pest controllers who usually benefit from the extra business wasp nest removals brings in.
Spheksophobia – the persistent fear of wasps - is one of the more common phobias. The word is derived from Greek spheco meaning wasps and Phobos the ‘Greek God of fear’ or dread.
We’ve just posted two stories about wasps on our social media sites and what is interesting is that, while one conforms to our stereotypical image of the wasp, the second article completely goes against our jaundiced view of this insect. It made me think, what do we really know about wasps?
I was recently doing some number crunching to see how things had developed during lockdown and I came across an astonishing fact – our business has seen a 23% increase in callouts relating to wasps! Between 1 July and mid-September in 2019 we had 271 callouts for wasp nests and, for the same period in 2020, we have had 334 callouts.