Solitary Wasp
I am guessing by now you may know the exact characteristics of Mr Lonely. Solitary wasp have no friends and will live out the rest of their lives just flying around. They rarely construct nest as they are more of a roamer.
Social Wasp
When last have you tweeted to a wasp? These wasp will actually live in colonies and of course do make nest. These colonies can be small like a a few hundred wasps or they can be huge numbering in the thousands. In the colonies not all wasp are able to reproduce as many times this is the sole responsibility of the queen wasp. I would not envy her for that job because all the queen wasp does is sit around all day and produce eggs. She doesn't fly out everyday to sting a few here and there and catch a little air time. Most of the workers within these colonies are sterile female workers.
- The normal Wasp is equipped with two pair of wings; so the wasp has four wings in all for weight balance and of course flight control.
- Wasp are Parasitoids, You just learned a new word to day my wasp reading friend. What this means is that the wasp may use it's pray for reproductive purposes. As gross as it may sound, a wasp would love to lay ts egg in a dead spider. Wasp preys eventually become its host for its brand new off springs.
- Wasp possess and stinger or ovipositor. This is what they use to defend themselves and bring food or a nesting host. Did you know that only females wasp are capable of stinging? How comes you ask? Elementary my dear boy. Since the stinger is part of the ovipositor and only females wasp has this sex organs. Its a no sting for males
What do Wasp Eat
When the wasp are larvae, meaning when they are babies, they are mostly grown in some host such as a spiders guts and will eventually eat out their host and become fit and healthy wasp where their return of the living dead eating habits will be over and they will then begin to crave and seek nectar.
Queen Wasp
Long Live the Queen, Long Live The Queen...Wasp that is. We have always heard about the queen in the Ant, Bee and Wasp Colonies. Have you ever asked yourself why these insects need a queen? How did she come by this royalty? Why there is no King Bee or King Wasp? Well here is how the queen got her royalty.
A queen was is picked from birth. Once the wasp identify a special larvae laid by a queen, that larvae is treated differently in order to produce another queen to continue the reproductive cycle so that the wasp generation may live on. The larvae selected for queening is also fed differently. It is given special protein that will foster high reproduction once those larvae becomes adult wasp. The larvae that become queens have high levels of a group of proteins that enable them to survive the winter and reproduce next year, whereas the ones that become workers are much shorter-lived and have low levels of these proteins. Now we know how a queen is selected but what about the king. Well the wasp queen is quite a solo producer as the queen is able to determine which sex the wasp will come as and produces the cell to reproduce without the intervention of a male.