There once was a nest of vespula germanica above the window of my study, a rather big nest that grew to a size of about 3000 or 4000 animals. The only thing I did about it was to close a hole in the wall, because a few of them kept coming inside. I sometimes went outside to watch the traffic at the entrance of the nest.
More fun facts: wasps eat mosquitos. Lots of them! And they pollinate plants. Adult wasps are vegetarians, when they hunt or steal a piece of your steak (I have seen that happen!), then they collect food for their larvae.
If you really want to get rid of wasps, use an essential oil (peppermint, lemon grass). Wasps communicate using pheromones and do not tolerate strong odor. Do not spray the nest, spray the area around the nest. You do not have to kill them.
I can intellectually process all the facts you wrote, but in my dealing with wasps and hornets, I find it hard to see them as anything than fast-moving balls of pain, always ready to strike at you out of nowhere, when you least expect them. Also, as a relatively fresh parent, as a threat to my children. I tend to prefer dealing with them by installing mosquito nets in all windows, but if a hornet gets in and doesn't politely leave, it's makeshift flamethrower time.
Different nests can be as close as a few meters and their inhabitants will mostly ignore each other. The hornets were about 7 or 8 meters away from the yellow jackets, and I have never seen them fight. If you put some fruit or honey somewhere, they will (mostly) peacefully share it.
European hornets are not aggressive at all, they are just big and loud. When one gets into the house, I usually wait for it to settle down somewhere and then carefully catch it with a glass and a piece of cardboard. We also have mosquito nets on all windows and doors.
Another fun fact: wasps will not spend much time around their nests. They usually leave the nest at high speed (do not stand there!) and then roam an area of multiple square kilometers. When they come back they immediately go back into the nest. Sometimes a single animal may inspect the closer area, but this is rare.
Once you understand wasps, there is not much to fear. I understand your concerns regarding you child/children, and it is probably a good idea to keep wasps at a distance for some time. When children grow up, there is little danger, though. The sting of a single wasp or hornet will not harm a human being unless you are allergic. (European!) hornets use almost the same venom as yellow jackets, only more of it. (In Asia or South America, be more careful!)
Finally, wasps do not want to sting you. Most of the time they are just investigating. When a flying wasp bothers you, slowly and carefully push it away with your hand. Most of the time it will just go away. On the net there are videos of some guy who tries to get stung by various wasps. It is educating to see how much he had to bother them before they did.
My experience of sitting outside in the summer (modulo NW England) is that their flight path covers getting close to 100% of the airspace in my garden.
Though I'm sure there are other varieties I've only ever seen one type of wasp in the UK, and that's this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowjacket, and my experience of them is that they are irritating and aggressive bastards. I don't doubt that wasps are an integral part of the ecosystem, but I'd prefer it if they integrated into a geographically distinct part of the ecosystem from me and my lunch.
Having been chased by wasps while on a riding lawnmower, I'm calling bullshit! And those suckers are fast!
Seems like you are talking about bombus, not vespa. The worst thing about hornets is that if one insect has bit you somewhere near their nest than you better run as fast as possible from that place because of pheromone mark.
Not the wasps here. There's always a few wasps flying around the nests when I find them.
It also doesn't take much to aggravate them.
But to answer your question more directly: We have happily surrendered part of our terrace to wasps. Their right to live tops our desire for convenience. A nest lives for one year. If we do not want them to use the same spot next year, there are ways to make sure they do not.
We get rid of termites and insects by fumigating entire buildings. I don't see anything wrong with doing that to wasps as well. After all, in all likelihood, wasps will vastly outlive the human species...
"in the last 5 years in NordRhein-Westfalen only once was someone fined 45 euros for destroying a wasps nest" https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2018/07/24/nein-wer-eine-e...
The fines for thousands of euros are the maximum possible fines, which massively differs to how fines are handed out in practice.
That's almost worse imo.
Of course this raises questions around who is making these judgements, and there's sometimes unfairness in how they are applied (eg. police in the US, broken tail lights and the colour of skin of the person stopped), but it doesn't mean that the underlying goal isn't sound, just the implementation.
Personally I've had experience of this. My car tax (UK) lapsed and I didn't renew it. An oversight during a busy time of my life (moving house), and one that I noticed and fixed independently once I noticed, it must have been after a month or two.
However, during the period when my car wasn't taxed the police noticed and reported it (to the authorities, not to me) who issued a fine (~£90) that was sent to me by post. Unfortunately though I'd told the authorities that I'd moved house, twice, they sent the fine and all followup correspondence to my old address and I ended up with a choice, pay debt collectors (they managed to find my new house /just fine/) for the now increased fine + expenses (in the region of ~£800) or go to court. Worst case either way was I'd have to pay the increased amount.
I went to court and the three justices deliberated my case (I could hear them) and though they decided that I could afford the increased amount, it wouldn't be in anyone's interest to levy it as the circumstances in which this happened mitigated my lack of attention to the increasing fines. I wasn't a deliberate law breaker and ultimately a large fine wasn't going to change my on consideration generally good behaviour, and they made me pay the original ~£90 rather than the substantially increased amount.
As the saying goes, the law is an ass.
For example over the year 2009/2010, 59 laws, which provided for 670 implementing decrees, were promulgated.
According to a Senate report, as of September 30, 2010, only 3 laws had received all of their implementing decrees. And only 20% of these decrees had seen the light of day. However, a law without an implementing decree is useless: it is not applicable.
[0] https://www.bfmtv.com/politique/parlement/faute-de-decret-d-...
Your fact check article is also only partially relevant as it addresses the sensationalist claim that these fines apply to killing a wasp but the conversation was about a wasps nest.
The article also states that these maximum fines exist but that even the very low fines that have been handed out only happen very rarely. In other words: the laws exist but they're applied so rarely as to be effectively meaningless (which is true not just for wasps but for animal cruelty in general). That doesn't disagree with what I said though.
At least that was my impression in Berlin; wasps got all the sugar, Berliners stayed pretty thin for the most part.
They were also really docile and tolerated a good deal of me fumbling around with the nest. I waited until it was cold out and covered up pretty thouroghly, but they were mostly content to let me flop them around with a set of long BBQ tongs.
The wasp protection one gets broken all the time for obvious reasons.
FWIW, this bit is true of everyone I've known who was aware of an anaphylactic allergy, independent of their likelihood of exposure to the allergen. "Carry an EpiPen, know how to use it, make sure some of the people around you are aware of your allergy and know how to handle a reaction" is a very light-weight and reliable solution to "something relatively common could easily kill me".
I myself have had zero stings of any bee or wasp in my life so I prefer to gently coax them away from my plate. Some people are absolutely terrified about them though so "just let them be" rarely seems to be good advice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespula_germanica
Edit: actually I don't know which one is more common, Vespula germanica or Vespula vulgaris. I wouldn't be able to differentiate between them.
In my experience your hand is a minor annoyance that they'll fly around and continue eating. Only way to have peace is to lay traps around your eating area.
I’ve found wasps extremely persistent and confident in ways most insects never are.
It’s one thing to gentle swat them but when they come back for 5-10min straight it's understandable why people don't like them.
I also got bit on the mouth as a child when I drank a can of coke that had a wasp inside so I'm not exactly unbiased.