Was just standing in the kitchen, up to my oxters in apple, onions and fresh ginger - when it suddenly occurred to me. I have not seen a single wasp this year - not that I want to - but where are they? Normally at this time they are drunk on fermenting fruit and being a complete pest!!

I've seen the odd one or two.

Maybe the same place as the butterflies - but then, wherever they are, they're not missed.

This is true. ST. I haven't seen many this year either!

Last year, l had wasp nests in my garden under the apple trees. I also had them in my roof and they were disturbed because l asked my friend to put a fly paper up at their entry. They didn't seem to mind the first bang of the hammer but the second bang and all hell was let loose!
We ran across my garden and the wasps followed us. I had to throw my jumper off as they were stinging my body!
The poor man, his face was stung badly and it swelled up. He ended up at the doctors and put on antibiotics!
Won't try that remedy again!

I have had loads of butterflies - lovely little creatures!

Years ago, I remember when we drove cars with the headlights on, and the moths and other insects I assume ,would be flying straight into the lights for the whole journey ending up squashed on the grill.

I have made a point of looking for them, and have not seen one in the last few weeks or to my knowledge years. What's happened to them ?

Speaking about the lack of insects on windscreens, Matt Shadlow, Chief Executive of British insect conservation charity Buglife said: “Yes, indeed this is a well recognised phenomenon.

“Just today we had a member of the public phone up and say, unprompted, that ‘the front of my car is now devoid of insects, and there are virtually no moths in the headlights’.

“This is part of the wholesale loss of small animals in recent decades. The public know about bees and butterflies, but these are just the tips of the iceberg. Moths, hoverflies, wasps, beetles and many other groups are now sparse where once they were abundant.”

An amateur German group called the Krefeld Entomological Society has been monitoring insect numbers at 100 nature reserves in Western Europe since the 1980s. Although there were the annual fluctuations they discovered that by 2013 numbers began to plummet by nearly 80 per cent.

Experts mostly blame intensive agriculture and the use of pesticides over the past 50 years.

Since 2006, beekeepers in Britain have lost about a third of their managed bee colonies each year largely due to the loss of flower-rich grassland which has declined by 97 per cent from the 1930s, and the increased use of insecticides on crops.