Hobbies And Interests
Mud Daubers and Yellowjackets
Mud daubers live alone rather than in hives or colonies. The Texas A & M University AgriLife Extension describes mud daubers as being between 3/4 of an inch to 1 inch long. Their coloring is usually dark brown or black, and some subspecies may have yellow markings. These insects have a long narrow waist called a petiole. Mud daubers are useful to humans because they feed black widow spiders, a dangerous arachnid species, to their larval offspring. Mud daubers rarely sting.
According to the University of Arizona&'s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the western yellowjacket lives underground in large colonies that can house thousands of wasps. This type of wasp often builds hives in abandoned rodent burrows. These insects are yellow and black with light brown wings. They are aggressive and can sting repeatedly. They are especially attracted by the smells of sugary or sweet substances or protein-based foods such as meat or fish and tend to hover around garbage cans or bother people who are carrying syrupy drinks.
Paper Wasps and Velvet Ants
The University of Arizona explains that there are three species of paper wasps that live in Arizona. The yellow paper wasp is yellowish in color; the Navajo paper wasp is dark brown; and the Arizona paper wasp is reddish brown with thin yellow bands. Paper wasps build paper-thin nests on the eaves of buildings during the spring and summer, but during the winter the worker wasps die and the queen wasps abandon their hives. The queen will build a new nest the following spring. These wasps rarely sting humans.
Despite their name, velvet ants are not ants at all, but wasps. Justin Schmidt, a writer for the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum and the author of the article "Wasps," indicates that there are more than three dozen species of velvet ants that live in Arizona&'s Sonoran Desert. One variety of velvet ant is covered with long white hair. Other varieties have silver, red or black bristles. Velvet ants are not aggressive toward humans, but they have a painful sting when provoked.
Tarantula Hawks
Tarantula hawks are a wasp species that can grow to be two inches in size. These insects have blue-black bodies with orange or red wings. Pima Community College explains that although the adults of the species feed on pollen and plant nectar, their young are carnivorous. The tarantula hawks prey on tarantula spiders to provide food for their offspring. The female wasp stings and paralyzes her prey and drags it back to her burrow, where she lays an egg on the spider&'s body. When the egg hatches it feeds on the still living but paralyzed tarantula. Tarantula hawks are not aggressive toward humans, but they have a painful sting.