Growing up I always felt sorry for bees, the noble animals sacrificing their lives and dying after injecting a pesky sting.

Then there are wasps, who can wantonly sting away without fear of such consequences. Turns out Cape Town and the relevant authorities are fighting a losing battle against the winged warriors, with this below from TimesLive:

The city has a dedicated “wasp control team” which has‚ during this summer season‚ removed more than 2‚500 wasp nests as part of its Invasive Species Programme.

Last summer the city responded to 1‚600 reports about wasps. This summer more than 2‚500 reports were received – and reports continue to arrive daily.

The reports are arriving so rapidly that authorities cannot cope – here’s the city’s mayoral committee member for energy‚ environmental and spatial planning‚ councillor Johan van der Merwe:

“The teams have been working six days a week to respond as speedily as possible to the reports. Additional capacity has also been created in an attempt to contain the invasion and prevent it from spreading to more neighbourhoods. However‚ despite the unit’s tireless efforts‚ the city’s teams will unfortunately not be able to attend to all the reports by the end of this season purely due to the sheer number of requests”.

The main problem is that the wasps are not a native species, but rather the invasive European paper wasp. Experts say populations have been discovered in Newlands‚ Constantia‚ Plumstead‚ Kenilworth‚ Claremont‚ Parklands‚ Atlantis‚ Bothasig‚ Morningstar and Hout Bay.

Take a look at that picture up top – that would be the wasp you want to report.

[source:timeslive]

[imagesource:here]