Stung by Paper Wasps!

Recently, I was stung twice by wasps unusually. I got the second stinging when I tested the wasps whether they differentiate between my body odours or between the colours of my dress. The result of the test, apart from having a stinging, is only that the wasps have become aggressive recently! This kind of wasp is the Paper Wasp (Ropalidia marginata, Vespa ferruginea, 'Sengulavi' in Tamil). These social wasps are much different from other wasps. I find them often build nests in the dark undisturbed storerooms, inside rain water pipes and also even inside the bedrooms!

A crawling wonder on back!

At school, as boys we used to play on its sandy ground. Then we were often stunned by feeling some creature crawling up between our shirt and the back. As soon as we understood it to be a 'biting ant' we pulled out our shirts and brushed away this ant - to avoid its agonizing bite. Yes, this is a special type of 'ant' that looks like an ant; but it is a different one: a Flightless Wasp! (Eupelmus vesicularis, 'Rail vandi erumbu, Soogai erumbu' in Tamil).

Twittering again about Nature's wonders!

We have seen already about the already observed and recorded wonders. But such wonders are still happening around us to be seen and recorded. I exhibit (twit!) here some of such wonder pictures for your viewing:

Bagworm uses here a strip of Jowar plant as its cocoon material (we had seen earlier a Bagworm using small sticks or thorns)!

Excavator Wasp Encountered

I found heaps of moist sand in front of a building site. A fly came to the sand and began to excavate it with its legs, and then entered into the burrow and returned out in a minute to fly away. I presumed that it might be a wasp with its name connected to sand – Sand Wasp. I searched for ‘Sand wasp’ in search engine. The results showed its name as ‘Sand wasp’ only!

These sand wasps (Bambicini) prey upon other insects. The females excavate the sand and form nests. They bring preys into the nest for the developing larvae.

To my astonishment I had a close encounter with another sand wasp on the very night of the day of my reference to the search results! It came into my house and was being attracted towards the UV rays of the tube light. It had a whitish grey back and three orange ring-like first divisions on the dorsum of its abdomen, and the rest of the divisions were black, each one of them ending in a white ring at its ending part!

Wonder encounters with this wonder wasp!

Wasp Nest with 'Live Feeds' encountered

This week I found a freshly formed nest of Mud wasp in the corner of a window. It was made of red soil. On breaking open it from the corner I found inside the cells three big wriggling larvae of the wasp brown, and yellow in colors and also --- 61 smaller larvae of some other insect! The smaller larvae were bright greenish in color, and lay paralyzed! They have been put inside the nest by the female of ‘Mud dauber’ (Black and yellow Mud wasp), after stinging them. I had seen before only paralyzed spiders in such nests. Now with this nest I find larvae of other insects too. Probably availability factor makes difference in the type of such live foods, it seems.
Inside another older nest of the same type of wasp I found fifteen mature wasp larvae with the remnant pieces of the smaller larvae!

I was risking the stinging by the mother wasps while I broke open the nests. But later I read that they do not return to the nests after sealing the last cell with mud!

It is really a wonder behavior in these wonder wasps!