50 Fun Facts About Wasp

Wasps belong to which insect order, shared with bees and ants, whose name means membrane-winged?

A wasp is defined as any narrow-waisted member of the suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor an ant.

Why do wasps not form a natural group (clade)?

Bees and ants sit deep inside the wasp family tree, so 'wasp' is what is left over once you remove them.

Which wasps can sting?

In these wasps the egg-laying tube became a sting; most wasp species are parasitoids that lay eggs with it instead.

How do most wasp species live?

Only the family Vespidae contains social species; the vast majority of females forage and breed independently.

A wasp's stinger is a modified version of what organ?

That is why only females sting; males never had an egg-laying tube to modify.

Under the haplodiploid system, a male wasp develops from what kind of egg?

The female stores sperm and releases it egg by egg, giving her near-total control over the sex of her offspring.

The world's smallest known insect, at just 0.139 mm long, belongs to which family?

Dicopomorpha echmepterygis belongs to the fairyfly family Mymaridae; a relative, Kikiki huna, is the smallest flying insect.

The largest social wasp, reaching up to 5 cm long, is a giant hornet native to which continent?

Tarantula hawks and the giant scoliid of Indonesia rival it among the non-social species.

Fossil fig wasps in Brazil's Crato Formation appear how long before the first fig trees?

The wasps seem to have been ready before their partner plants existed, an odd twist in a famous mutualism.

What is the primary material social wasps use to build their nests?

They scrape weathered wood, chew it with saliva into a paper and arrange the cells in a honeycomb pattern.

What is the narrow 'waist' joining the two parts of a wasp's abdomen called?

It separates the mesosoma from the metasoma; sawflies lack it and are not counted as wasps.

Adult social wasps cannot digest protein, so what do they eat from their own larvae?

The larvae exude secretions rich in sugars and amino acids, a trade for the chewed insects the adults bring home.

When are people most often stung by wasps?

Colonies stop rearing workers then, and the idle workers go looking for sugar, which means picnics.

Which bird family specialises in eating wasps and bees, wiping the venom off on a twig?

The honey buzzard raids nests for larvae and is the only known predator of the so-called yak-killer hornet.

Which parasitoid wasp was one of the first sold commercially to control whitefly?

It is used in greenhouses on tomato, cucumber, aubergine, marigold and strawberry crops.

Which wasp family made Charles Darwin doubt that a benevolent God could have designed nature?

In an 1860 letter to Asa Gray he could not accept a deity creating them 'with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars'.

Aristophanes' comedy The Wasps, first staged in 422 BC, uses a chorus of wasps to represent whom?

The play satirises Athenian addiction to the law courts; the jurors are armed with stings.

H. G. Wells's 1904 novel featuring giant wasps with three-inch stings is called what?

A growth compound creates giant animals; one wasp measured 27.5 inches across its wings.

How many US Navy ships have borne the name USS Wasp?

The first was a schooner acquired by the Continental Navy in 1775; Westland also built a Wasp helicopter for the Royal Navy.

Which English rugby club, founded in 1867 when insect names were in fashion, is named for the wasp?

Originally London-based, the club later moved to Coventry.

In Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played with Fire, which character uses 'Wasp' as a hacker handle?

It was her kickboxing ring name, and she has a wasp tattoo on her neck.

A 2018 study found the words people most associate with wasps were 'sting', 'annoying' and what?

The authors blamed poor public knowledge of wasps' roles as pollinators and pest controllers, and noted far less research than on bees.

Yellowjacket is the North American name for social wasps of which two genera?

A worker is about 12 mm long; only inseminated queens survive the winter to found new annual colonies.

Unlike a honeybee, a yellowjacket can usually do what with its stinger?

The lance-like stinger has only small barbs, though it occasionally lodges and tears free.

Which university's Yellow Jackets sports teams are represented by a mascot named Buzz?

The Columbus Blue Jackets' mascot Stinger also looks suspiciously like the same insect.

True hornets belong to which genus?

There are 22 species, most in tropical Asia; the European hornet is the only one native to Europe and reaches 35 mm.

Despite its name, North America's bald-faced hornet is really a member of which group?

It is an aerial yellowjacket, and it has a unique defence: it can squirt venom into the eyes of a vertebrate intruder, causing temporary blindness.

What nickname did the mainstream media give Vespa mandarinia after it turned up in North America?

Japanese tabloids had called it the 'murderer sparrow hornet' since at least 2008; scientists stuck with the established common name.

The Asian giant hornet was found in the Pacific Northwest from late 2019; when was it declared eradicated?

Nests were destroyed in Whatcom County, Washington, and Vancouver Island; no sightings were confirmed in 2022, 2023 or 2024.

Japanese honeybees kill an Asian giant hornet scout in a ball heated to what temperature?

The bees survive up to 50 °C, but the hornet cannot take the heat combined with the high carbon dioxide inside the ball.

Roughly how many species of fig depend entirely on fig wasps for pollination?

Almost every tropical fig has its own species of wasp, and neither can survive without the other.

In fig wasps, which sex is wingless?

Males mate inside the fig and chew an escape hole for the females, then die without ever leaving.

Figs produce which enzyme to digest the dead wasps inside them?

So a ripe fig contains no crunchy wasp, just its absorbed nutrients; the female enters through a tiny opening called the ostiole.

Paper wasps of the genus Polistes are sometimes called umbrella wasps because of what?

About 300 Polistes species exist; the most common in Europe is Polistes dominula.

A study of European paper wasps found individuals with brighter warning colours were what?

Bigger venom glands went with brighter aposematic colouring, making the warning honest.

Cuckoo wasps, with their metallic jewel colours, can defend themselves against angry hosts how?

Their flattened or concave underside lets them roll up, a trick called volvation.

The tarantula hawk wasp stings a tarantula and then does what with it?

The larva eats the still-living paralysed spider; the female's stinger can be 12 mm long.

Which US state adopted a tarantula hawk as its official insect in 1989?

The choice was prompted by elementary-school children from Edgewood researching state insects.

What are the only real predators of tarantula hawk wasps?

Most animals avoid them, and many moths, flies and beetles mimic their colours for protection.

Which entomologist created the sting pain index by letting dozens of insects sting him?

His 1990 paper classified 78 species and he won an Ig Nobel Prize for the work.

Which insect was originally the only one rated 4, the top of the Schmidt sting pain index?

Later versions added two more species at level 4; ordinary bee and wasp stings sit at 2.

Growths induced by cynipid wasps on oak trees are a main ingredient of what?

About 1,300 cynipid species are known; most alternate a sexual and a parthenogenetic generation each year.

Which group builds vase-like mud nests attached to twigs or walls?

Mud daubers and pollen wasps also build mud cells, while many other species simply dig burrows.

The Pompilidae, or spider wasps, specialise in catching what to provision their nests?

Tarantula hawks are the giants of this family; a single paralysed spider feeds one larva.

Which fashion trend of the 19th and 20th centuries took its name from the insect?

Sharply cinched waistlines emphasised hips and bust; diamond and emerald wasp brooches were also popular.

In which geological period did wasps in the broad sense (Apocrita) first appear in the fossil record?

They had diversified into many surviving superfamilies by the Cretaceous; sawfly relatives go back to the Lower Triassic.

Fossils of the extinct wasp genus Palaeovespa come from the Florissant beds in which US state?

Seven species are known from those Eocene rocks and from Baltic amber, which also holds crown wasps of the genus Electrostephanus.

How do pollen wasps of the subfamily Masarinae carry pollen, unlike bees?

They pollinate Penstemon and the waterleaf family, one of the few wasp groups that are genuine pollinators.

Roughly how many species of beewolf hunt bees to provision their nests?

The adults of these Philanthinae feed only on nectar and pollen; the bees are for their larvae.

Which English science-fiction author's 1957 novel Wasp is generally considered his best?

The Royal Navy, meanwhile, has named nine ships HMS Wasp, the first an 8-gun sloop launched in 1749.