Hobbies And Interests

Wasps That Eat Nectar

Most species of adult wasps eat nectar, even if they use the bodies -- in some cases living bodies -- of caterpillars, spiders and other invertebrates to feed their young. The plants that are usually visited by wasps have tiny flowers, like Queen Anne's lace, dill or milkweed. Thus, wasps are also minor pollinators of plants.
  1. Solitary Wasps

    • The wild carrot wasp is a black wasp with transparent wings with dark veins and a long abdomen around 0.43 to 0.47 inch long. The adults are found on flowers like wild carrot in the late summer, while the larvae are predators in the nests of other wasps and the hives of bees. Other species of the wasp prey on cockroach eggs, wood-boring beetles and other wasps. The wild carrot wasp is found in southern Canada and the United States. The velvet ant is a wasp whose females are wingless. They look like large ants covered with golden or scarlet fur. The female of dasymutilla species lays her eggs in the nests of bumblebees, and her furry body protects her from being stung. Velvet ants grow from 0.6 to about an inch long. They're found in the South and the Southwest, and feed on nectar.

    Social Wasps

    • The wasp Polistes fuscatus, a social wasp that lives in the woodlands and savannas of temperate north America, feeds mainly on plant nectar, but uses insects and caterpillars as food for the developing larvae. The adult yellowjacket also eats nectar and fruit juices but will feed the larvae bits of animal tissue. She will capture the prey, slice it into pieces with her jaws and then carry it back to the larvae in the nest, piece by piece. She might chew a bit of the prey into a paste, then feed it to the young.

    Parasitic Wasps

    • The tarantula hawk is a 2-inch-long, glossy green-blue-black wasp with orange wings that captures and paralyzes tarantulas for its young. When the larva hatches it will eat the still living spider. However, the adult eats the nectar of flowers like milkweed. The tarantula hawk is found all over the world. The cicada killer wasp is a 2-inch-long wasp that feeds its young with cicadas. The female captures the cicada in flight, then stings and paralyzes it. She will then carry the cicada to an underground nest where her young will feed on it later. The young don't become mature till almost a year after hatching, and when they do they leave the nest, mate, produce offspring and die. The adult cicada killer eats nectar during its brief life.

    Pollen Wasps

    • Pollen wasps are unusual in that they provision their young with nectar and pollen rather than insects. A few species of mud wasp follow this pattern. One mud wasp is common in the western United States. There are related species in the east. Mud wasps build nests of hard mud or sandy material or twigs, with one to thirteen cells placed vertically on the nest top in a straight line. It prefers the nectar of flowers such as penstemon, salvia and ranunculus.


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