Pests & diseases › Wasps
Wasps
Common wasps eat ripe and damaged fruit, especially plums, pears, apples and grapes.
Symptoms
- Wasps tunnelling into ripe fruit
- Hollow apples with wasp inside
- Damaged plums and pears swarming with wasps in late summer
Lifecycle
Numbers build through summer, peak August–September.
What to do
- Pick fruit as soon as ripe — don't leave for wasps
- Bag individual cordon-fruits in fine mesh
- Hang wasp traps (jam jar with water + jam) away from fruit
If it's bad
- Avoid — wasps are valuable predators of caterpillars and aphids earlier in the year
Stop it coming back
- Harvest promptly, don't let windfalls rot under the tree
- Bin damaged fruit
Crops it goes for
Plan the plot, track every sowing, cook the harvest
Sowing reminders and harvest forecasts for your own frost dates, the Seed Tin, Scan Centre for any label or packet, and the Potty Mouth Garden Club. Free to start.