Yes, wasps are territorial, but this just means that they will defend their nests at all cost. As long as you do not rock their nest (or otherwise cause strong vibration) or stand directly in their flight path, you are safe.

Different nests can be as close as a few meters and their inhabitants will mostly ignore each other. The hornets were about 7 or 8 meters away from the yellow jackets, and I have never seen them fight. If you put some fruit or honey somewhere, they will (mostly) peacefully share it.

European hornets are not aggressive at all, they are just big and loud. When one gets into the house, I usually wait for it to settle down somewhere and then carefully catch it with a glass and a piece of cardboard. We also have mosquito nets on all windows and doors.

Another fun fact: wasps will not spend much time around their nests. They usually leave the nest at high speed (do not stand there!) and then roam an area of multiple square kilometers. When they come back they immediately go back into the nest. Sometimes a single animal may inspect the closer area, but this is rare.

Once you understand wasps, there is not much to fear. I understand your concerns regarding you child/children, and it is probably a good idea to keep wasps at a distance for some time. When children grow up, there is little danger, though. The sting of a single wasp or hornet will not harm a human being unless you are allergic. (European!) hornets use almost the same venom as yellow jackets, only more of it. (In Asia or South America, be more careful!)

Finally, wasps do not want to sting you. Most of the time they are just investigating. When a flying wasp bothers you, slowly and carefully push it away with your hand. Most of the time it will just go away. On the net there are videos of some guy who tries to get stung by various wasps. It is educating to see how much he had to bother them before they did.

It was though, a fine was levied. There's flexibility in the punishments that are dished out in a lot of justice systems and I suspect it's to take into account that the law is not really nuanced. It's hard to write down /all/ possible motives, reasons or contexts in which a law or rule has been broken, and allowing the punishment to be scaled based on judgement seems like a reasonable thing to allow. I guess that's what judges are for.

Of course this raises questions around who is making these judgements, and there's sometimes unfairness in how they are applied (eg. police in the US, broken tail lights and the colour of skin of the person stopped), but it doesn't mean that the underlying goal isn't sound, just the implementation.

Personally I've had experience of this. My car tax (UK) lapsed and I didn't renew it. An oversight during a busy time of my life (moving house), and one that I noticed and fixed independently once I noticed, it must have been after a month or two.

However, during the period when my car wasn't taxed the police noticed and reported it (to the authorities, not to me) who issued a fine (~£90) that was sent to me by post. Unfortunately though I'd told the authorities that I'd moved house, twice, they sent the fine and all followup correspondence to my old address and I ended up with a choice, pay debt collectors (they managed to find my new house /just fine/) for the now increased fine + expenses (in the region of ~£800) or go to court. Worst case either way was I'd have to pay the increased amount.

I went to court and the three justices deliberated my case (I could hear them) and though they decided that I could afford the increased amount, it wouldn't be in anyone's interest to levy it as the circumstances in which this happened mitigated my lack of attention to the increasing fines. I wasn't a deliberate law breaker and ultimately a large fine wasn't going to change my on consideration generally good behaviour, and they made me pay the original ~£90 rather than the substantially increased amount.

As the saying goes, the law is an ass.

In France there are a lot of new laws every year (~100) but at least on third of them will not be enforced, mostly because there is no budget to implement them, or it is political gesticulation to please some electors [0].

For example over the year 2009/2010, 59 laws, which provided for 670 implementing decrees, were promulgated.

According to a Senate report, as of September 30, 2010, only 3 laws had received all of their implementing decrees. And only 20% of these decrees had seen the light of day. However, a law without an implementing decree is useless: it is not applicable.

[0] https://www.bfmtv.com/politique/parlement/faute-de-decret-d-...

Most laws are poorly enforced and only get invoked when you have otherwise pissed the right person off and they’re looking for something to get you on.

Sounds like i need more wasps in my house!

Ah, this explains the bitterness of Berliners

They also annihilate the bees which are much better pollinators

Sometimes wasps have other ideas about "treading on them" like "You are near and made a sudden move, you are threat". It gets worse when you are allergic to wasps. I've worked near a place where transport company cleaned their syrup and milk carrying trailers, so we sometimes had a lot of wasps and one of coworkers had to constantly have adrenaline with him. If he got stung and couldn't do it himself, we were trained on how to jab him and call ambulance.

In the US, it's yellowjackets (vespinae, minus the hornets) that are rather annoying. They are attracted to sugar and meat, and sting rather aggressively, which makes outdoor barbecues unpleasant (to put it mildly); paper-wasps (Polistinae) are indeed rather easy to live alongside, but they look quite similar so inherit the bad-rap that yellowjackets have.

"yeah, what did wasps ever do to you?" attack the shit out of me for no good reason!

Avoid your own house or yard? Annoyance? Tell that to my wife, my brother in law, my uncle, my cousin, or my good friend. They all could literally die if stung, and have all been to the hospital at least once after a sting.