Wasps: Wings and Stings and Eating Little Things

Now that the weather has settled into a summer temperature pattern, there is more time for outdoor activities while social distancing. Most of the sounds of nature are pleasant and inviting, but there are a few which put the listener on alert.

Low frequency droning is one of those unmistakable sounds, especially when associated with a flying insect.  A seemingly casual flight pattern belies the potential agony of a chance encounter and the real possibility of a painful attack from multiple directions.

Wasps in the Florida panhandle, and most other locales, are known for their grumpy nature and dreadful retaliation if provoked.  They are the irritable eccentrics of the mini aerial realm.

Provocation may be innocent or malicious; wasps do not care.  Whether an oblivious gardener stumbles upon a nest or a spiteful adolescent uses a wasp nest for target practice with a green pine cone, as many wasps as available will strike back at the offender. 

These social wasps live in colonies much like honeybees, and may have up to several thousand bad-tempered members.  Depending on the species, they build nests in protected places above the ground or below the soil surface. 

Some social wasps are omnivorous, feeding on overripe fruit and carrion. Some of these social wasps, such as yellow jackets, may scavenge for dead insects to provide for their young.

Sporadically, some species, such as yellow jackets and hornets, will invade honeybee hives and rob honey.

Like honeybees, social wasp colonies consist of mostly female workers.  Another similarity is only the females have stingers and are willing to effectively apply them. Unlike honeybees, the wasp queens live only one year.

A majority of the wasp colony dies away in autumn, leaving only the young mated queens alive. During this period they leave the nest and find a suitable area to hibernate for the winter.

After emerging from hibernation in spring the young queens search for a suitable nesting site. The queen will build a basic wood fiber nest roughly the size of a hickory nut and will begin to lay eggs.

The queen raises the first several sets of wasp eggs until enough female workers can maintain the offspring without the queen’s assistance. All of the eggs produced at this time are sterile female workers who will begin to construct a more elaborate nest around their queen as they grow in number.

There are also solitary wasps which live and operate alone in Wakulla County.  They do not construct nests, instead depositing their eggs on host insects which serve as a sort of mobile nursery/café.

When the eggs hatch, the host becomes the first meal for the wasp larva.  Mature wasps commonly feed on nectar and pollen.

There is also a native wingless wasp in Florida and the southeast. It is commonly known as the Velvet Ant or the Cow Killer. While it will deliver a painful sting, as other wasps will, there are no verifiable reports of livestock lethality.

Almost every pest insect species has at least one wasp species which preys upon it or parasitizes it.  This places wasps as a critically important natural control.

Some wasps are increasingly used in agricultural pest control on organic and conventional farms as they prey mostly on pest insects and have little impact on crops. Nasty dispositions aside, they are quite effective at tormenting their assigned prey.

A healthy respect for their function and social distancing is a good plan for coexistence. Just be sure to give them the space to work and live, and everyone will be better for it.