We all know that insects can do wonders for our gardens, and while having the odd bee buzzing around your plants is fine, no one likes living on top of an ant hill or wasps nest.
But one mum who had her garden taken over by wasps has claimed to have received harsh backlash from her neighbour for getting exterminators involved to solve the problem - as the neighbour thinks she should have left the stinging insects alone.
The mum explained she has a five-year-old son who uses the garden as his "safe place" and loves to take walks around it, but said he has been unable to do so recently because of the wasps who have built their nest in the outside space.
In order to make the garden safe for her son again in the wake of the start of the summer holidays, the mum decided to have the wasp nest exterminated professionally - angering her neighbour who branded her "evil" for her actions.
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In a post on Mumsnet, she claimed: "My neighbour is elderly and lives alone. She told me there were hundreds of baby wasps coming into her bathroom covered in white powder dying and asked what 'the man' was doing in my garden.
"I explained we had a wasps nest and the wasps were coming out of their nest and attacking us. I have a disabled 5-year-old son and the garden is his safe place, so I couldn’t have these wasps ruining our whole summer holiday and not allowing my 5-year-old son to play in his own garden. So I called someone to come and take care of it.
"Now my neighbour says she thinks it's evil that I killed hundreds of baby wasps instead of keeping my child indoors for the summer until the wasps had gone.
"I honestly don’t see what I have done wrong! If they were not bothering us then I would have left them but as soon as we came out of our back door, they were flying up to us trying to sting us.
"Was I 'evil' to have a wasp nest removed from my garden?"
Commenters on the Mumsnet post were largely on the mum's side, as they said there was nothing wrong in having a wasps nest removed from her own property - especially when it was a risk to her young son.
One person said: "No you are not [being unreasonable]. We have just had a wasps nest removed too. I know they are good pollinators but they sting indiscriminately."
While another added: "We have one in our garden but they're not bothering us so I'm going to leave them there. If they were stopping us from going out in the garden I would have done the same as you."
But some pointed out that she could have told her neighbour about her plan in advance so that she could close her windows, as it would have prevented her from having dying wasps in her bathroom.
Someone wrote: "You're not unreasonable to have the wasps exterminated, but you should have forewarned your neighbour so she could have closed her windows. It’s not nice to have to put up with hundreds of dying wasps covered in poison flying in your bathroom window."
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