Wasps/Bees

This is Polistes metricus, a type of Paper Wasp.  They can be agressive if they feel that their nest is being threatened.  

Though big and scary, this species is extremely calm and never stings humans unless it is being hurt. It's an Eastern Cicada Killer, Sphecius speciosus.  They dig a hole in the ground, drag a paralyzed cicada into it, and lay their eggs on it.  That way the baby wasps have a nice big meal to sustain them until they can dig their way out to emerge as adults. 

Here are photos of two other Paper Wasps, probably Polistes apachus (top) and P. exclamans (bottom).  Neither are as aggressive as the previous species.  They will watch me closely if I get too close and raise their wings in a threatening manner, but I've never actually been attacked by them. 

At first I thought this was an unusual new species of paper wasp, but I have now learned it to be the Southern Yellow Jacket (Vespula squamosa), a large and aggresive wasp that makes huge nests.  This one had just started, and so far it looked like an inverted bowl.  I didn't realize what the bowl was at first (I had not yet seen the wasp), and unfortunately knocked it down while investigating.  That's the bowl that she's walking over, on my garage floor.  On the underside (inside of the bowl) hangs a couple of cells that she was about to start raising larvae in.  She must have decided that my garage was too dangerous for nest-building because she moved on without starting anew. 

Mason Wasps earned their name by using holes in bricks.  This one, Pachodynerus erynnis, is using a hole in our window trim.  

This is a Yellow-legged Mud-dauber Wasp, Sceliphron caementarium, making its muddy home on the inside of our garage door.  Inside of that structure are several tube-like chambers, each one containing an egg and several dead or paralyzed insects as food for the larvae to feed upon after hatching.

This is a Potter Wasp, Eumenes fraternus.  They sculpt a remarkably delicate little mud pot, the size and shape of a fingertip, which they then stuff with spiders and eggs before sealing the top (see the second picture).

It took me a long time to figure out what these weird insects were.  Look at how small the abdomen is, compared to the thorax or even the head!  They like to pump that abdomen up and down like a small triangular flag, which is how they earned the name Ensign Wasp.  This particular example is Evaniella semaeoda.  They lay their eggs inside of cockroach egg cases, where the young wasps eat the developing cockroach larvae before emerging as adults. 

This is known as a Common Hover Fly (Diplazon laetatorius), but it's not a fly at all.  It's actually a non-stinging wasp that parasitizes other insects.

This is another non-stinging parasitic wasp, a species of Enicospilis.  They are nocturnal, which is unusual for moths.  Their larvae feed on the young of our really big moths as they pupate inside their silky cocoons.

I don't know what kind of wasp this is, but it was small and docile.  It was inside the house, so I released it outside.  It looks a lot like a Black Soldier Fly (see the Other Insect page), but it's not- the Black Soldier Fly has wings that extend beyond the tip of the abdomen. 

One of our trees developed a hollow spot where a rotten branch had broken off, and occasionally it's served as a home for a colony of Honey Bees (Apis mellifera).  On a couple of occasions we saw bees surrounding the opening as seen in this photo.  Perhaps they were trying to cool the hive, or maybe the colony was splitting in two and these bees were getting to ready to fly off with a new queen.

One time the hive split and the second colony established itself on a neighboring tree - not in a hollow, but just hanging right there from a branch.  The colony got to be pretty large, but eventually they departed, leaving their honeycomb behind as seen in this photo. 

I used to manage a couple of beehives that you can read about by either clicking here or on the "Beekeeping" part of the navigation bar at the top left.