The US government is giving out free wasps

The brown marmorated stink bug is an invasive pest. To help deal with its numbers, the Oregon Department of Agriculture is releasing its natural enemy: the tiny samurai wasp. There's a lot of work that goes into it. ▪ Thanks to all the team at the ODA, and to Chris Hedstrom for the macro footage.

(you can find contact details and social links there too)

[TomScottGo]

I'm focusing on just one project here to make the story clearer, but I should point out there are many different projects like this, working with many different species. (And to preempt the obvious question in the title: the wasps are not available to the general public!)

[quintenschuppert]

It's crazy that British spelling is used in the subtitles when Tom is speaking, and American spelling when the researcher is speaking. What an effort.

[AhrimanThorn]

“I’ve been working with them for a decade, and I’ve never been stung.”

That’s exactly what someone who was being mind controlled by a parasitic wasp would say.

[ajbowers]

I build cellphone towers and the last 3-5 years have been INSANE because of these stink bugs. When I open up a cabinet anywhere in the Midwest there are dozens, if not HUNDREDS, of them living in there. And somehow they ALWAYS find a way into my car when I’m parked on site.

Another cool topic for a video would be the swarms of bees that form around antennas. You can be several feet in the air and have a cloud of 100 bees just buzzing around the antennas that dissipate as soon as you turn the equipment off.

[cmdrpanorpa]

"Taxpayer funded wasps" not a phrase I expected to hear, and a phrase I will use when telling people this information.

[maxherman]

Thanks for dropping this during the holiday season, really helpful for those needing last-minute gift ideas

[TheKlaun]

Biologists have a special place in my heart. I remember at my graduation ceremony, we did it together with Biology and it was just one PhD after the other about the same fungus doing its thing. I also remember molecular biology and putting tiny quantities of things into things all day.
Imagine having to study, feed and nurture those wasps for decades as your job and still have that sort of passion. Those guys must be both the most chill and most obsessed humans on Earth. Hats off to people doing that sort of work, you're truly amazing and without you, our planet would be a much worse place.

[NAHDFOX]

In time I've realized one of the big things that makes Tom's videos so enjoyable is that, not only does he go out of his way to help people learn more about these otherwise unknown or obscure jobs/creations/facts about the world, but he also takes the time to focus on the workers and designers that helped make it happen. It is so nice to see how he focuses on the human components behind everything; being able to see interviews with the very people who make these things work really makes the subject matter feel that much more valuable. There's something so starkly different between a voiceover video of someone explaining what is going on with generic stock images or videos, versus seeing Tom actually go to each location and talk to the workers themselves about what goes down. It no longer feels like just some fun factoid; it really emphasizes that there are workers actively keeping something like this going.

[Slateproc]

I absolutely love how good Tom Scott is at making videos that make you go "huh, neat". It's not earthshattering knowledge but it's just interesting enough

[danieljensen]

Glad you covered the concerns about introducing competitive species, lots of history of that going terribly in the past!

[longcx]

I can't believe Tom is giving out 100k free wasps

[DanyilDvorianov]

As a kid I loved raspberries. I was eating them from a bush in my grandma’s garden with both hands, but what I didn’t see was a stinkbug hiding on top of a berry.
The taste lingered in my mouth for days, and I can never look at raspberries again the same way…

[andrewweirny]

They've somewhat recently started releasing imported wasps to try to control the emerald ash borer beetle, which is very depressingly killing over 99% of the ash trees in northeastern North America. Might make a good follow-up video.

[ihateunicorns]

I think I can safely say that releasing a genus of wasps that lay their eggs in the bodies of bugs, where the larvae will hatch inside the living bodies of these bugs and start to devour their internal organs one-by-one, is a good example of how the 'natural' way is not always the nicest.

[debbiefox]

This is fantastic work. As a child I found many of these stink bugs in West Sacramento, CA about 45 yrs ago. I'm sure they had been brought in via the Port of Sacramento. I have many house plants and know many people who use this type of pest control in their homes so as not to use pesticides. For most it works fantastically if they choose the correct predator. As a child my parents would release hundreds of ladybugs on our roses and garden plants for aphid control and it worked really well. I have a little jumping spider I let live in and around my plants for fungus gnat control.The work you are doing is invaluable. 😊🌱💚

[PixieII]

The past two summers I've had wasps nesting in my stables, and each time I've hardly had any issues with horse flies - normally my horses get bitten really badly. Not sure if the wasps have been hunting the horse flies or scaring them off, but they're welcome to keep returning if I get the same results each year (also helps that they've never stung me)

[fuelvolts]

I'm sure others have pointed out, this isn't the "US Government" it's the "Oregon Government". The federal government is not a part of this at all. This is funded by the residents of Oregon.

[AntiVectorTV]

"I've worked with this wasp for over a decade."

Well, if you can vouch for him, I trust you.

[adamsbja]

By the way, just so folks know: there's a whole bunch of similar-looking stink bugs in the Oregon region (and I assume elsewhere), marmorated are the major pest ones. If you're in a position to consider control like this make sure you identify what you've got and whether it's an issue.

[lukiauriga]

A taxpayer-funded Wasp Chamber is not something I expected to learn about today, but here we are