50 free Wasp trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Wasps are the group everyone else evolved out of: bees and ants both descend from wasp ancestors, which is why 'wasp' is really a label for everything narrow-waisted that is not a bee or an ant. This quiz covers that family tree, plus the anatomy that matters: the sting that started life as an egg-laying tube, the haplodiploid genetics that let a queen choose her offspring's sex, the paper nests chewed from wood pulp, and why late summer is when you get stung. It then meets the individual wasps: yellowjackets and the mascot named after them, hornets and the 'murder hornet' that reached Washington State, the bees that cook it alive, fig wasps and the enzyme that dissolves them, cuckoo wasps that roll into a ball, tarantula hawks and New Mexico's schoolchildren, gall wasps and iron gall ink, and the parasitoids that made Darwin doubt a benevolent creator. Justin Schmidt's sting pain index and Aristophanes' chorus of jurors get their turn too. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on wasps and the individual families and species, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Our Bees and Insects quizzes cover the neighbours.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Wasps belong to which insect order, shared with bees and ants, whose name means membrane-winged?
Hymenoptera
A wasp is defined as any narrow-waisted member of the suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor an ant.
Q 02Why do wasps not form a natural group (clade)?
Bees and ants evolved from wasp ancestors
Bees and ants sit deep inside the wasp family tree, so 'wasp' is what is left over once you remove them.
Q 03Which wasps can sting?
Members of the clade Aculeata
In these wasps the egg-laying tube became a sting; most wasp species are parasitoids that lay eggs with it instead.
Q 04How do most wasp species live?
Solitary
Only the family Vespidae contains social species; the vast majority of females forage and breed independently.
Q 05A wasp's stinger is a modified version of what organ?
The ovipositor
That is why only females sting; males never had an egg-laying tube to modify.
Q 06Under the haplodiploid system, a male wasp develops from what kind of egg?
An unfertilised egg
The female stores sperm and releases it egg by egg, giving her near-total control over the sex of her offspring.
Q 07The world's smallest known insect, at just 0.139 mm long, belongs to which family?
Mymaridae (fairyflies)
Dicopomorpha echmepterygis belongs to the fairyfly family Mymaridae; a relative, Kikiki huna, is the smallest flying insect.
Q 08The largest social wasp, reaching up to 5 cm long, is a giant hornet native to which continent?
Asia
Tarantula hawks and the giant scoliid of Indonesia rival it among the non-social species.
Q 09Fossil fig wasps in Brazil's Crato Formation appear how long before the first fig trees?
About 65 million years
The wasps seem to have been ready before their partner plants existed, an odd twist in a famous mutualism.
Q 10What is the primary material social wasps use to build their nests?
Chewed wood pulp
They scrape weathered wood, chew it with saliva into a paper and arrange the cells in a honeycomb pattern.
Q 11What is the narrow 'waist' joining the two parts of a wasp's abdomen called?
The petiole
It separates the mesosoma from the metasoma; sawflies lack it and are not counted as wasps.
Q 12Adult social wasps cannot digest protein, so what do they eat from their own larvae?
Sugary saliva
The larvae exude secretions rich in sugars and amino acids, a trade for the chewed insects the adults bring home.
Q 13When are people most often stung by wasps?
Late summer and early autumn
Colonies stop rearing workers then, and the idle workers go looking for sugar, which means picnics.
Q 21In Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played with Fire, which character uses 'Wasp' as a hacker handle?
Lisbeth Salander
It was her kickboxing ring name, and she has a wasp tattoo on her neck.
Q 22A 2018 study found the words people most associate with wasps were 'sting', 'annoying' and what?
Dangerous
The authors blamed poor public knowledge of wasps' roles as pollinators and pest controllers, and noted far less research than on bees.
Q 23Yellowjacket is the North American name for social wasps of which two genera?
Vespula and Dolichovespula
A worker is about 12 mm long; only inseminated queens survive the winter to found new annual colonies.
Q 14Which bird family specialises in eating wasps and bees, wiping the venom off on a twig?
Bee-eaters
The honey buzzard raids nests for larvae and is the only known predator of the so-called yak-killer hornet.
Q 15Which parasitoid wasp was one of the first sold commercially to control whitefly?
Encarsia formosa
It is used in greenhouses on tomato, cucumber, aubergine, marigold and strawberry crops.
Q 16Which wasp family made Charles Darwin doubt that a benevolent God could have designed nature?
The Ichneumonidae
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'.
Q 17Aristophanes' comedy The Wasps, first staged in 422 BC, uses a chorus of wasps to represent whom?
Old jurors
The play satirises Athenian addiction to the law courts; the jurors are armed with stings.
Q 18H. G. Wells's 1904 novel featuring giant wasps with three-inch stings is called what?
The Food of the Gods
A growth compound creates giant animals; one wasp measured 27.5 inches across its wings.
Q 19How many US Navy ships have borne the name USS Wasp?
Eleven
The first was a schooner acquired by the Continental Navy in 1775; Westland also built a Wasp helicopter for the Royal Navy.
Q 20Which English rugby club, founded in 1867 when insect names were in fashion, is named for the wasp?
Wasps RFC
Originally London-based, the club later moved to Coventry.
Q 24Unlike a honeybee, a yellowjacket can usually do what with its stinger?
Sting repeatedly
The lance-like stinger has only small barbs, though it occasionally lodges and tears free.
Q 25Which university's Yellow Jackets sports teams are represented by a mascot named Buzz?
Georgia Tech
The Columbus Blue Jackets' mascot Stinger also looks suspiciously like the same insect.
Q 26True hornets belong to which genus?
Vespa
There are 22 species, most in tropical Asia; the European hornet is the only one native to Europe and reaches 35 mm.
Q 27Despite its name, North America's bald-faced hornet is really a member of which group?
Dolichovespula
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.
Q 28What nickname did the mainstream media give Vespa mandarinia after it turned up in North America?
Murder hornet
Japanese tabloids had called it the 'murderer sparrow hornet' since at least 2008; scientists stuck with the established common name.
Q 29The Asian giant hornet was found in the Pacific Northwest from late 2019; when was it declared eradicated?
December 2024
Nests were destroyed in Whatcom County, Washington, and Vancouver Island; no sightings were confirmed in 2022, 2023 or 2024.
Q 30Japanese honeybees kill an Asian giant hornet scout in a ball heated to what temperature?
46 °C
The bees survive up to 50 °C, but the hornet cannot take the heat combined with the high carbon dioxide inside the ball.