Wasps Are Getting Drunk Off Fermented Fruit and Terrorizing Beer Gardens

A brutal heatwave in Europe is having an unlikely effect on wasps, and the little insects are getting angrier and violent as a result. The beer gardens and pub patios of England are getting inundated with "lager lout" wasps this year, because their traditional food source -- larvae from hive queens -- has dried up in the scorching sun.

Left without a food supply, the pugnacious little bastards are eating fermented fruit and getting drunk, which makes them more aggressive as a result, according to Metro UK. Experts at the The Sussex Wildlife Trust warn that a "‘tight’ band around their abdomen stops them from eating a conventional diet of flies in later life and they become hooked on sugar."

With fruit drying at the peak of summer, wasps are devouring the fermented sugar, but also descending upon the outdoor drinking quarters of many pubs and lapping up booze. Now, there's drunk wasps hanging down at the pub, looking for a scrap just like the conventional meathead might.

Shane Jones of Ridtek Pest Control told Metro of his busy summer with the wasps: "Wasps have built absolutely massive nests and, now that all the larvae have grown up and the queen has stopped laying eggs, the colonies have a workforce with nothing to do -- and nothing to eat."

Now, Jones says, the wasps "go down to the pub, obviously."

"Wasps can’t handle their booze, so they get tanked-up and fighty -- like lager louts."

The only recourse for us humans is to stock up on the bug spray, lest we dare enter the gauntlet with a bunch of punchy wasps who have nothing to lose.