The ghosts of wasps returning to make us eat weak porridge in the future (Picture: Getty)
A world without wasps could take us back to eating gruel for breakfast, lunch and dinner, a charity has warned.
Wasp numbers seem extremely low this year, with pest control companies only seeing a fraction of their usual call-outs.
Biodiversity loss and a changing climate could be to blame, and you may ask ‘So what?’ about the loss of a much-hated species.
The aggressive stinging insects are never welcome at a picnic, at best an annoyance and at worst a literal killer for those with allergies.
But Buglife’s Paul Hetherington told Metro.co.uk that if you don’t like wasps, you’d like a world without them even less.
‘It would basically mean that the majority of the population would have to change their diet quite radically,’ he said. ‘You’d have to make it much more based around the things that don’t need pollination, like grains, rice, and potatoes.
‘You start to look at a very bland diet, almost going back to medieval times where the bulk of the population basically had gruel.
Fruit and veg aisles would be repurposed in a wasp-free world (Picture: Getty)
‘That could be where we end up, because we won’t be able to afford fruit and carrots and so forth.’
An essential ecosystem
This is because wasps are pollinators, like bees and butterflies, and the fate of each of them is intertwined, with all seeing sharp falls in numbers.
They would wreak their revenge for ecological destruction if they were gone, taking with them all manner of tasty foods and adding billions to the cost of our shopping baskets.
Paul said that without these insects to do the pollination, we’d have to pay humans to do it by hand with swabs: a much more time-intensive process, not to mention more expensive, when wasps and bees do it for free.
‘If you’re paying a minimum wage for people to hand pollinate in the UK, you are looking at putting around £2 billion on the cost of things that need pollination,’ Paul claimed.
Alex Hancock, from London-based company Indigo Pest Control, told Metro.co.uk that fears wasps were struggling this year could be true.
He has only seen a third of his usual call-outs to deal with wasps this July, though he hopes ‘low temperatures and late summer’ could mean the wasp season is simply delayed.
If not, then 2024 is set to have low wasp numbers, comparable though not quite as bad as 2012, when there was sustained wet weather and ‘very low wasp numbers’.
The charity Buglife carries out an annual survey of insect populations, and last year’s results showed a 78% decline in comparison to 2004: ‘a huge drop in a 20-year time period’.
This year’s survey is currently underway, and Paul said: ‘The results are actually looking like they’re going to be even worse than last year.
‘There’s definitely something very major going on. Certainly for certain species, it is probably worse than predicted.’
He said some of the reasons for the loss of wasps, such as the use of chemicals and loss of habitat, were well known.
But potentially other things are affecting them which need more study, such widespread use of 5G technology where transmission might disrupt their internal navigation system.
Some recent reports have suggested that 2025 could be a bumper year for wasps after their low levels this year.
But Paul said: ‘At the moment I’d say it’s very unlikely. You generally get a bumper year for wasps after you’ve had a really warm, hot, and relatively dry summer where lots of Queens can be produced.
‘So I would have thought it unlikely that next year we’ll see a population recovery.’
Human cost
All of this is bad for wasps and nature, of course. But even if you don’t care about that, it’s going to be bad for people too.
Paul explains the loss of natural pollinators would lead to ‘huge, huge inflation in your food basket’.
The Ukraine War has already led to a cost of living crisis with the price of fuel and electricity going up, but this could be minor compared to what’s to come.
Another reason wasp loss would make farming more expensive is that they are ‘nature’s number one pest control’ – and without them, people would likely use many more pesticides, which are expensive as well as harmful to health.
Pretty much every fruit would become unaffordable, Paul claimed, including apples, raspberries, blackberries, pears, plums, and tomatoes, and many vegetables too including peas, beans, courgettes, broccoli, sprouts, carrots and parsnips as there would be no new seed to plant.
Even chocolate, which is pollinated by midges, would be at risk in a mass insect die-out.
So if you see wasps buzzing around this summer, don’t be too annoyed. You’d miss them if they were gone.
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