IMPORTATION OF WASPS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21358, 6 December 1932, Page 13

IMPORTATION OF WASPS

Sir, —1 am as an Englishman much surprised to hear there is a project on foot (o import wasps, on the supposition that they will destroy the white butterfly. The people who suggest this cannot have lived in England, or they would know what a pest the wasp is there. Wasps, if they get into n house on a window-pane will certainly kill and eat flies, and probably would kill white butterflies, but they do not live on them, but on fruit, and for each white butterfly they kill they probably eat a pound of fruit, and destroy a dozen more pounds. Wo have thousands of wasps in England,but also thousands of while butterflies, and we certainly do not think of wasps as their destroyers, but as fruit destroyers. Apples, grapes, plums, figs and especially peaches will suffer, and probably about one-third of the crop be destroyed. If the fruit is allowed to hang on the trees till ripe or even nearly ripe, when gathering it, if without thick gloves, one will have to bo careful, as as likely as not the fruit may have a hole in it with two or three wasps in the hole. Also, the whole trees will probably have hundreds round it. When any fruit falls the ground under the trees is generally infested with wasps, eating the rotting fruit, and certainly no orchard will be a safe place for a New Zealand child without shoes to walk. Beyond that fact, alt fruit shops, sweet shops and grocers' shops will be infested with their buzzing everywhere, and quite ready to sting if attacked, and their sting is quite as bad as a bee's. Houses will also, whenever anything in the way of Tood is left about, be infested, and it will be necessary to have jam jars of treacle and beer to catch them. However, in the cold of the evening any in the houses Hot caught crawl about the floors ready to sting anyone who stamps on them. Even in picnicking. one does not really enjoy tea or lunch .with a dozen or two buzzing round as they will. The great thing, however, is the" loss they will cause the. fruit farmers. Could not some form of Ichneumon Itv be imported instead? Fruit farmers must look out. W. A. Ai.exandeb.