All About the Wasp

I did a post on bumblebees last month with the hope that I wouldn't be as afraid of them after I knew more about them, it worked. But I'd like to start out this post by saying that I don't think the same will be true for wasps, I'm pretty sure I'll hate them until I die.

There are many different types of wasps, about 30,000 species exist that we have identified. This list includes hornets, yellow jackets, and many others. Since there are so many we divide them into slightly smaller groups, solitary wasps or social wasps. Solitary wasps are the larger subgroup, there are only about 1,000 species of social wasps. One of the differences between the two is that solitary wasps don't form colonies, and social wasps do. Another one is that solitary wasps rely on their venom to hunt, while social wasps only use their stingers for defense.

Social wasp colonies start fresh each spring. A queen that was fertilized the year before comes out of hibernation, and builds a small nest in which she will lay her eggs. When the eggs hatch and the larvae matures they will be the first batch of worker females. The workers will begin to build onto the original nest, adding six-sided cells where the queen will lay more eggs. By the end of the summer the colony could have more than 5,000 wasps, but they will all die except for the new and fertilized queen. The founding queen dies along with the rest of the colony.

After female solitary wasps mate, they go off on their own to find food for their future offspring. Some may make nests, which could be anything from a burrow in the ground to nests made out of mud attached to twigs on a tree. Predatory wasps sometimes make their nests out of their prey. They sting their prey, therefore subduing it, and then lay their eggs inside it. The cuckoo wasps lay their eggs in the nests of unrelated host species.

Now that I know more about wasps I have to say that.... my earlier prediction was right, I still hate them.

And now for some fun facts:

Most wasps can choose the gender of their baby. If they want a male they don't fertilize the egg, but if they want a female they have to fertilize it.

Only female wasps can sting.

In some social wasp species the young feed the adults. The larvae exudes salivary secretions that include sugar and amino acids.