No Wasps
Every teacher recognises the blight of a lone wasp entering a classroom in the summer months – shrieking children, windows and doors thrown open, instructions to “just ignore it”, and overall, significantly disrupted learning. But that is soon to become a thing of the past at Bablake.
I am pleased to announce that we have been selected as the lead school for the Midlands in the No Wasp, No Sting, No Cry (NWNSNC) strategy which was launched 12 months ago today. There will be three aspects to the strategy which will fully come into place next term.
Signage. A study of 104 schools in the Netherlands has reported that by simply placing “No Wasps” signs in classrooms and around school buildings, it can lead to a 37% decrease in wasp entry. This is the simplest aspect of the strategy and signs have already appeared today in some places. We look forward to comparing this summer’s wasp figures with those from our monitoring survey last year.
Odour. We all know that flying insects are attracted to flowers in part by their fragrances. Less well known is that certain odours can be used to repel insects. We are purchasing a batch of 200 anti-wasp fragrance emitters (a bit like a plug-in air freshener). These odours are not particularly unpleasant to humans and have been specially engineered to repel all common sub-species of wasp. Emitters will be strategically placed in all rooms except for the boys’ changing rooms, which were assessed as being unsuitable due to the inherent odour spectrum being incompatible with the anti-wasp scents.
Ultrasound. High pitch sounds have been shown to confuse wasps. Dublin researchers showed in April 2019 that a vastly speeded up recording of Riverdance led to wasps moving in complex epicyclic patterns and being unable to progress forwards. Fortunately, humans are not able to hear the sound at this high frequency. Ultrasound speakers will be placed at doors to buildings from mid-May to prevent wasp entry. Please do not be alarmed if you do see a wasp circling above one of the school entrances – it will be stuck in a holding pattern.
We hope these three measures will see wasp incursions reduced by 98%, which will qualify us for the NWNSNC charter mark (NWNSNCCM). Once we have enough data to justify further outlay, we will be looking to roll out the No Wasp strategy to the whole Foundation.
* Please note that anyone associated with Wasps rugby and netball remains very welcome on the school site. While we will ask visiting club mascots to dress in sympathy with our new stance, this policy should not be misconstrued as being anything other than anti-insect.
(Bulletin No 22 - 1st April 2022)