Some Saskatoon residents dealing with active wasps

Over the past week, some people in Saskatoon have complained about an increase in the number of wasps they’ve seen buzzing around the streets.

Troy Davies can attest to that: The city councillor says he was stung nine times last week after he accidentally discovered a nest in his in-laws’ backyard.

“Last Thursday, I was stung nine times. I was helping out my in-laws beside their house. There was a nest kind of in between the house and where I was grabbing some stuff for my wife’s parents. So when I hit it, all of a sudden I was covered,” he told Shack on the CKOM Morning Show on Tuesday.

“(The wasp stings) were all pretty good, but the one on my hand, I basically looked like Martin Short in that movie where he blows up. I couldn’t see my knuckles for two days.”

Luckily for Davies, he was OK. He notes at one point there were at least 40 wasps underneath his shirt.

It’s not known if there are more wasps buzzing around Saskatoon than normal as the city doesn’t track them like it does mosquitoes.

But Sean Prager, an assistant professor of plant sciences at the University of Saskatchewan, has a couple of theories on why we could be seeing more wasps or why they’ve become more active.

“Most insects tend to reproduce more quickly when it is warm out as a general rule,” Prager explained. “It’s been reasonably warm (in Saskatoon), so that could be part of what’s driving that. However, I actually do not know if we have more necessarily, but we just might be seeing them with their timing (being more active).”

According to Prager, wasps can become more active and aggressive as the summer comes to a close.

“The yellowjackets — which are the wasps we’re mostly seeing — they’re social. They’re workers. What happens is during the peak point (of the season), their job is to go find material to make nests with or to lay eggs,” Prager said.

“As the season goes on and as plants die down, (the wasps) sort of run out of a job, so the theory is they become a little more aggressive as they become less occupied with their primary job. They’re going to die anyways, so there’s probably less reasons for them to be careful.”

While we don’t know if there have been more wasps or not, Prager noted that he was stung by one Monday night while in his backyard.

With wasps possibly roaming around more aggressively, Prager reminds people that it’s also important to be careful as some can suffer allergic reactions to wasps. He suggests it’s important to read up on first aid and how to treat a wasp sting.