Yes. Tired wasps respond to sugar water just like bees, and wasps help your garden more than most people know. You can use the same method. Put a drop of sugar water or kit syrup on a non-absorbent surface in the path of the wasp, then leave it alone.
Our Flower-first policy still applies. A wasp in a garden full of flowering ivy in September does not need your help.
Wasps pollinate. They’re less efficient than bees, but they visit flowers constantly. They’re vegetable patch guardians. Social wasps are generalist predators of aphids, greenfly and caterpillars.
Handling is the real difference. Wasps sting repeatedly and are less reluctant than bees. Never pick one up. Use a leaf or a piece of card, or just place the drop and step back. Don’t go near an active wasp nest. They can and will defend their territory from intruders.
You don’t have to save wasps; we simply ask you not to harm them. We know wasp stings are unpleasant, but they’re a critical part of the ecosystem in UK gardens and wild areas.
Tired wasps in autumn are normally at the end of their lives, so don’t be disgruntled if your syrup is refused or has little to no effect.
Why a late-summer wasp wants your sugar
The worker wasps you see flying around your garden don’t eat the insects they hunt. They’re transported back to the nest and fed to the young larvae so they can reach maturity.
The larvae produce a sugary secretion that the worker wasps use as their main food source. By late summer, the queen stops laying eggs, and that sugary secretion quickly dries up.
That’s why you spend much of August and September batting wasps away from your drink in the garden. They’re out of food, and your soft drink or just poured pint of cider is the perfect alternative.
The UK has over 7,000 wasp species, and most are solitary or parasitoid. The two you’ll actually meet are the common wasp and the German wasp.
Social wasps in the UK are estimated to take around 14 million kilogrammes of insect prey every summer, and a 2021 review drawing on more than 500 papers recorded wasps visiting 960 plant species, 164 of which depend on wasps entirely for pollination.