Wasps

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29353, 4 November 1960, Page 7

Wasps

Sir, — A farm advisory officer of the Department of Agriculture, Mr C. P. Whatman, has asserted that a wasp killed in a house was “probably one of the German variety.” Would he, or anyone else, please explain how to distinguish the “German variety” of wasp from those that have been, from time immemorial, so familiar a feature of the English countryside, and yet, whatever else they may have been called, have never, not even during a war, been referred to as “German”?—Yours, etc., MANN SPRICHT ENGLISCH. October 26, 1960.

[The farm advisory officer of the Department of Agriculture (Mr C. P. Whatman) said: "The scientific name of this wasp is Vespula germanica and it is probably from this that we have taken the common name, ‘German wasp.’ Owing to its wide distribution in Europe it is possibly better called by its other common name, ‘European wasp.’ It is the same species as found in England, and is easily identified by its yellow body and black markings on the abdomen. The worker wasp is slightly longer than a honey bee and the queen about twice the size. It has become a serious pest in the North Island and is apparently rapidly increasing in the South Island also.”]