High flying wasps

Sir, Charles Rispin’s experience with wasps on mountain-tops is not unique (letter, Aug 12). I have encountered similar swarms of wasps twice in the past 15 years, at 522m (1,712ft) on West Lomond Hill, Fife, and at 1,008m on Beinn Dearg in the Grampians. In both cases the wasps had clustered torpidly on the summit Ordnance Survey trig-pillar (indeed, on Beinn Dearg I was stung by resting my hand on the trig before I noticed them).

RICHARD ALLISON

Edinburgh

Sir, A party of four of us climbed Ben Chonzie (931m) on August 1, where I removed my jacket and placed it at the foot of the summit cairn. On picking it up some 20 minutes later I found it was swarming with wasps, though more were actually flying. I had not previously encountered a wasp’s nest in any cairn, but another member of the party said it was not uncommon to find them in Scottish summit cairns, and at even higher altitudes.