Help (and beer) needed for UK wasp survey

Wasps are widely hated but are useful predators, controlling garden pests and pollinating flowers. Now their abundance and diversity in the UK is being investigated by a team from UCL and the University of Gloucestershire. The project, sponsored by the Royal Entomological Society and in partnership with BBC One's 'Countryfile' programme, is the first of its kind in the UK and will use beer and the power of the public to find out more about these important but much maligned insects through The Big Wasp Survey. Members of the public are being asked to recycle an old plastic bottle and use a little beer to make a wasp trap for their back garden. After a week, once the wasps are trapped, you simply send them back to the team for identification and counting. Very little is known about populations and locations of wasps in the UK and it's hoped this survey will give scientists valuable information. Dr Seirian Sumner (UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment), said: "The black and yellow wasps that bother us at picnics are the social wasps and there are a number of different species that live in the UK.