Summer days always have the potential to be perfect - but often tend to have one hitch. You'll be sitting in a pub garden, tanning up a storm and chatting with your friends and then an imposter (by this I, of course, mean a wasp) soars this close to your face, making you jump out of your skin and lose the complete chill you had going on.
Not to mention, have you noticed that wasps are especially ferocious in the height of summer? Like, seriously, what is their problem?
Well, we recently got a shocking answer to our query that no one really expected: apparently wasps insist on attacking us in the summer because they're drunk.
Yes, that's right. You heard me: when it comes to the sunny time of the year, our wasp friends are completely smashed on alcohol, the bloody boozehounds.
So, how did this happen? Did they spend a little too much time down at the local watering hole? According to experts at the Sussex Wildlife Trust, wasps tend to soak up boozy treats because each year they develop a 'tight' band around their abdomen which prevents them from eating their usual diet of flies.
As a result of this, they get hooked on sugar; however, there is a catch in this in that their queen stops laying larvae, which produces the spit-sugar they rely on. Seeing as they can longer rely on their leader, they turn to the bottle, going out of the lash to drink up some decaying fruit and discarded cider.
Explaining further, a spokesperson from the Sussex Wildlife Trust told the Daily Mail:
"In the spring, queen wasps wake from hibernation and start to build their nest, laying eggs and raising their first brood of daughters. These worker wasps cannot produce fertilised eggs, so spend their time helping their mother to expand the nest and raise more young. One of their main jobs is searching for soft-bodied invertebrates to feed the developing larvae, bizarrely, adult wasps cannot digest the food they catch because their gut is so constricted by their thin "wasp waists". Instead the workers chew up the prey and feed it to the larvae – in return, the larvae produce a sugar-rich spit that the workers can drink. They are also attracted to the abundance of sweet foods that humans provide - to a starving wasp, a jam sandwich or a can of cola is just too tempting to avoid."
So, are you feeling a little sorry for the wasps you swot away on a regular basis? They're going hungry and turning to your pint of cider in order to survive and all you can do in response is hit them away with a menu and moan to your friends about what an annoyance they are. Who's the victim now, eh?