Beer Garden Wasps in Britain Are Going on Boozy 'Sting-Rages'

Wasps are attracted to the aroma of alcohol, which includes your pint. Pete Fordham/Flickr

Drunken brawls are breaking out in beer gardens across Britain this summer, but not in the form you might suspect. These brawls are between man and wasp.

Apparently, due to an unusually cold winter in Britain, wasp season began much earlier than usual. This has resulted in larger nests, larger swarms, and larger wasps than normal, and as the summer has dragged on, all of these thirsty winged terrors are seeking out their preferred form of sustenance (sugar) en masse. Since the primary sugar source in nature this time of year is decaying, often fermenting fruit, wasps develop a taste for alcohol.

Beer gardens have thus become wasp havens, as the insects have easy access to open pints of beer and cider. And when wasps get drunk, they get angry.

"Wasps can’t handle their booze, so they get tanked-up and fighty — like lager louts," explained pest control expert Shane Jones, to Metro.

So, there are beer gardens being overrun by wasps on "sting-rages." That's probably one consequence of climate change you hadn't considered.

According to a spokesperson with the Sussex Wildlife Trust, more people are getting stung this year than normal, and they are advising people to be careful about how they discard sugary foods.

"Maybe the most influential factor on wasp numbers is when people do not dispose of their waste properly, especially food with a high sugar content, such as fruit," said Dee Ward-Thompson, technical manager at the British Pest Control Association. "We always advise waste to be securely bagged and held within a clean container, away from where young children might play."