If it feels as though there are more flies around this summer, you’re not alone. At the same time, one of Britain’s most familiar insects appears to be having a remarkably quiet year. Could the two things be connected?
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IF your kitchen, garden or summer lunch seems to have acquired rather more flies than usual this year, you may not be imagining it.
Across the country, people have been complaining about an increasing number of bothersome flies since the middle of summer while, at the same time, noticing another familiar feature of the British summer appears to have gone unexpectedly quiet.
We may be being harassed by extra flies this year, but where are all the wasps?
For Professor Seirian Sumner, a behavioural ecologist at University College London who has spent much of her career studying them, the shortage has become impossible to miss. Her students need wasps for their research, she says, and this summer they have simply struggled to find them.
Professional pest controllers, meanwhile, have reported a similarly quiet season, with far fewer requests to remove wasp nests than they would normally expect.
That does not yet prove that Britain’s wasp population has suddenly collapsed. Sumner is careful to make the distinction herself, and the observations so far are anecdotes rather than national monitoring data, with the Big Wasp Survey has yet to provide a proper picture of the 2026 season.
But the signs have been striking enough to raise the intriguing possibility that the apparent shortage of wasps could be one reason why so many of us seem to be noticing more flies?
While it is tempting to imagine that a hot summer must be good news for insects, the reality is rather more complicated.
Different species respond to heat in different ways, and 2026 has been a particularly peculiar year. A warm, dry spring initially appeared to provide good conditions for queen wasps emerging from hibernation and beginning new colonies. But the weather that followed may have caused problems.
Prof Sumner believes that extreme heat could have left social wasps especially vulnerable. She has also noticed something the relatively few wasps she has encountered this summer appear unusually small.
That may matter because adult insects do not continue growing once they have completed their development. If larvae receive insufficient food, or develop unusually quickly in high temperatures, they can emerge as smaller adults. Sumner says both explanations may be relevant this year.
The result may be a summer in which the wasps we normally expect to see buzzing around gardens, pub tables and picnic blankets simply aren’t there in the numbers we are used to.
For most of us, that might sound like excellent news. But from an environmental perspective, it may not be.
Wasps have an unfortunate public-relations problem. They sting, they investigate your sandwich with what can only be described as unreasonable confidence, and by late summer they have a remarkable ability to appear at precisely the moment somebody decides to eat outside.
But they are also important predators. Wasps feed on other insects and play a significant role as pest controllers, as well as acting as pollinators and decomposers. If their numbers really are lower this year, the consequences could extend beyond quieter lunches in the garden.
This is where the flies become interesting. Prof Sumner has suggested that a reduction in wasp numbers could potentially allow populations of flies and other insects to increase because one of their natural predators is less abundant. Reporting on the unusually quiet wasp season has also highlighted this possible connection.
The two observations may be connected, or the flies may be benefiting directly from the weather. Hot conditions can accelerate insect life cycles, allowing some species to develop and reproduce more quickly, while prolonged dry weather can also drive insects towards homes and gardens in search of food and water.
So, are there actually more flies than usual?
That is another question which deserves a little caution. There have certainly been reports this summer of people dealing with unusually large numbers of flies, including some severe local infestations, while the subject has generated plenty of discussion among people who feel their homes and gardens have become noticeably busier.
But, just as with the wasps, there is no single national count telling us that Britain has experienced an across-the-board fly boom in 2026.
What we can say is that this summer’s weather has created conditions capable of changing how and where we encounter insects. Some may develop faster. Others may struggle with extreme temperatures. Some may be driven towards the places where we live.
And some, like the wasps, may simply become much harder to find.
That is perhaps the most interesting thing about this summer. It isn’t a straightforward story of more insects or fewer insects. It appears to be a story about a changing balance.
While the anecdotal evidence may overwhelmingly state there are more flies around this year, the relationship between the missing wasps and this year’s apparent abundance of flies has yet to be proved. Scientists will need more data before drawing that conclusion.
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