Social and Solitary

All of the antlion holes are now gone, I'm assuming that they have gone into the cocooning stage. I've began to observe the rest of my front yard finding a wide variety of life that's gone unnoticed, including the yellow and black striped wasp on my previous blog.  On Tuesday October 28 I came across a very strange looking insect attempting to crawl into my house.

I went outside to take the trash out when I noticed creeping in through the bottom of my screen door. It was, another wasp? As I got closer I noticed that it looked nothing like the other wasp I found. It had a slender waist, with a bright yellow behind leading into a black needle stinger. What the hell is that, where did it come from? I grabbed a gray flip-flop that was to the left of me and squished it, not to the point i'd kill it, I just wanted it to stop moving. I quickly grabbed my mom's iPad and recorded him. It's leg was twitching and it's body was throbbing, I figured it was on the verge of dying. I grabbed the wasp by it's left antenna and set it down on the wooden bench in the front yard. I wanted to make sure it was dead before I brought it inside to take more pictures. When my mom came home from work I was excited to show her what I had discovered during my observations. When we went outside, it was gone.
                                                                                                                                -Field Notes 10/28/14

                                                                    "Throbbing Wasp"
                                                                   Field Notes 10/28/14
As I explained in my field notes, the wasp escaped before I could get any better pictures of it.
However, I was given the privilege to capture this stunning creature on video.


I did a bit of research on google the insect, but I couldn't find anything on it. All I found was it was a wasp, which isn't very helpful.Then I started to wonder, how wasps mate? According to "How Do Wasps Reproduce," wasps are put into two separate categories: social and solitary. This determines how wasps mate. Social wasps live in "colonies" among other wasps and the queen. Social wasps make their nests "in holes or above ground." Most social male and female wasps mate only once a year, females then hibernate and the male dies. In the spring the queen lays her eggs in the holes of the honey comb, and leaves her babies to be cared for by "workers." Most "female workers are sterile"(not able to reproduce.) Their job is to assist the queen in caring for her young. Almost as if their a maid in a rich household. It must be devastating to not be able to reproduce and have their own family. Sterile female wasps must have some thick skin, knowing their whole life they'll be caring for the queen's babies. I can't imagine how I would feel if I found out I was sterile, it would be heart breaking. My dreams of getting married and having a baby of my own would be crushed. Solitary wasps, however, work a bit different.

After further research on "How Do Wasps Reproduce" I found that all Solitary wasps are fertile and they all live alone; the majority of wasp species are solitary wasps. They commonly lay their eggs and abandon them, but in some cases the mother wasps stay with their babies. Solitary male and female wasps mate in the spring and unlike the social males that immediately die after mating, solitary male wasps usually survive through the summer.

There is one vital difference between social and solitary wasps. When social wasps are in danger, they release a pheromone that alerts the other wasps in the colony. Solitary wasps don't have that advantage, they live alone. Another interesting fact I found was that social wasps use their stingers for "defensive purposes." Solitary wasps use their stingers to "hunt and feed their young." It's almost like society influences the social wasps to do harm, in order to impress the others and seem bad ass. The solitary wasps on the other hand use it for good, they can be their true selves because there is no one there they need to impress.




Gallegos, Alicia. "How Do Wasps Reproduce?" Animals.Pawnation. Demand Media. n.d. Web.28 Oct. 2014.