As the warm weather continues, wasp season begins for Cincinnati. Students are given a choice of either eating in the cafeteria or out on the many patios if the weather permits. However, more and more students are adjusting their eating spot due to the recent return of the wasps.
“I was just standing outside and I got stung by a bee,” Saanvi Maadaadi, ‘26, a member of the tennis team, said. “I had a tennis game that day too, and I played the first half of the game with a numb arm.”
While these wasps can be a physical threat, most students typically find them as a recurring annoyance.
“Sometimes it has gotten really bad at one particular table,” Jude Shotwell, ‘25, a student who frequently eats on the patio above Marx Field, said. “Either because of people eating there before us, or an apple someone brought. It just got so bad that we had to switch to another table about twice a month.”
While bees are known for feasting primarily on nectar, wasps and yellowjackets are carnivores. They eat other insects and are much more aggressive when it comes to stinging.
“I try to encourage as many students as possible not to drop food all over the cement and leave food lying around,” Mike Hulgin, the security guard responsible for watching the patio during lunch, said. “I’m looking forward to the weather getting colder and having the end of it here soon.”
According to the University of California, most wasps die off due to the cold of the winter, with only the queen surviving in order to restart the colony. However, as temperatures increase, this gives more wasps a chance to survive, resulting in an even larger colony than before.
“I throw a lot of them away every day,” Christopher Beck, one of the school’s custodian’s, said. “I just grab them in the bag, tie it up, and throw it away. I throw away 30-40 bees everyday.”
While our custodial staff has no control over the weather, new policies have been taken in place to help reduce the pests.
“We have wasp spray,” Beck said. “We’ve been putting out little [traps] filled with bee killer everywhere. It would really help if everyone would empty their [juice] bottles and stop putting trash into the recycling bin.”
There are simple things that students can do to help reduce the wasps.
“If [the students] just clean up behind themselves, it would kill a lot of bees,” Beck said. “They wouldn’t have anything to eat, and would just go to another location besides us.”