The wasp, known as 'the little murderer', is unique to Irish shores and has proven hugely successful as a biocontrol alternative to chemical pesticides in the fight against the weevil.

New Zealand farmers have been desperately looking for a way to combat the root weevil, whose larvae attack the clover on farms, meaning livestock have less food and therefore gain weight more slowly and produce less milk.

After a seven-year search for an appropriate biological weapon, AgResearch . . . New Zealand's largest Crown Research Institute . . . discovered the native Irish wasp in Athenry, Co Galway.

The wasp strikes at the adult weevil, injecting one or more eggs into its abdomen.

This makes the female weevils sterile, breaking the weevil life cycle. The wasp larva also grows inside the weevil, kills it, and then bursts out of the weevil's body during the last larval stage.

Following the discovery of the murderous Irish wasp, the Institute collected samples from a number of locations in Ireland and released them in January 2006 on a farm at Patoka, New Zealand, with unprecedented success.

"It is doing astoundingly well at Patoka, " said the programme leader, Dr Pip Gerard. "In just over a year, it appears to have knocked the autumn weevil population down by over 75%, and 86% of the remaining female weevils are sterile. It is these autumn weevils that we want to control as they lay the larval generation that knocks clover production the hardest, especially in spring."

The Irish wasp has a further advantage over other wasp strains because they are all female, and therefore will not mate with a different wasp family. "We have never found or reared a male wasp from any collection in Ireland, so they are something special, " said Gerard. "We are confident that it will continue to breed true and that the Irish wasp will provide useful control of clover root weevil throughout New Zealand.

Obviously the wasps are better at finding weevils than we are."

Have wasps buzzed off?

THIS summer's record breaking rainfall has resulted in a massive drop in reported sightings of one of the most feared flying pests in the country . . . the wasp.

However, insect experts have told the Sunday Tribune that the apparent disappearance of the yellow and black striped insect may be little more than an illusion.

"We won't know for certain for another three weeks, but I suspect that they're still out there and we just haven't seen them, " said Danny Proctor of Combat Pest Control. "Because of the bad weather, no one has been out in the garden, cutting the grass or painting the house. But even this week, with the one or two days of sun that we've had, we've already been getting a big surge in calls from people."

Proctor said his company had received 10 call-outs the week before last, but that last Wednesday . . . a day of rare sunshine . . . they had got seven calls by mid-afternoon.

"I think that in the next three weeks we'll be very busy, " he said.

"I don't think the wasps have gone anywhere."