Aphid-hunting Wasps

A travel day, beginning with a 4 a.m. (ET) wake up and an hour-long, pre-dawn drive to the Orlando airport. By noon, nine hours after waking, we were back in Northfield. Time to unpack, open up the house, retrieve the dog, take a few deep breaths and have a look around the yard before we needed to drive back to the cities to pick up Lida, who was travelling with her volleyball team.

Things were different here. After heat indices above 100 degrees in Florida, the low clouds, low humidity, and temperatures in the mid sixties, the weather literally provided a welcome breath of fresh air. Looking out the front door, a chipmunk greeted us instead of an anole lizard.

Last week, before we left on our travels, I had placed a handful of empty trap nests in the holder at the bottom of the front yard bee block. Inspecting these today I found one trap nest sealed off and another with a wasp stationed at the entrance, Passaloecus sp., an aphid-hunting wasp. These tiny hunting wasps are recognizable by their white mandibles and by their use of pine resin in partitioning and sealing their nests. The chemical properties of pine resin make it a good choice for nest construction, but one wonders how the wasps manage to work with such sticky material?

Posted on June 24, 2017 01:27 AM by