Wonderful World of wasps

IndiaVision Exculsive - Having been bitten by a wasp on the nape of my neck ( if this happens to you, take a raw potato slice and put it on the bite. It takes the sting out) I can understand the fear of wasps. But like anything else in life , if you choose to rise above your own prejudices, you will find a fascinating world full of drama all around you. And nothing typifies it more than the wasp.

The wasp is a truly complex being. It is precise , determined , and aspires to overcome the largest obstacles with intelligence.
Take the nests they dig out: the Bembix rostrata digs into the ground like an excited puppy , scratching the sand out continuously and throwing it backwards between it's hind legs. The Cerceris tuberculata pick up bits of gravel with their mouths from the bottom of the pit and take it outside. The group of Sphex flavipennis work together rolling away gravel and if one piece is too heavy the wasps huff and puff with shrill hoo hoo like screams .

And the nests themselves. Some wasps build their homes on tree branches, others in tree holes, underground, already existing animal burrows and lofts. All of them have one thing in common : they are master craftswomen ( all the workers are female) The Eumenes wasps decorate their nests with shells and pebbles.

How do they make their nests. The social wasps chew wood with their saliva till it becomes like soft paper.  They make great wasp cities , combs of perfect exact hexagonal cells which architects say are the most useful and economical  form of building in nature. They use them for only one season and then make another the next year.

What do they do for food for their babies ? While adults subsist on pollen and nectar they hunt insects for their babies. They bring in beetles, caterpillars, spiders, crickets, all far larger than themselves and all alive and yet paralyzed. The wasps are precise and perfect in their actions. The female chooses a caterpillar more than ten times her weight. She grips him by the skin of his neck and holds tight inspire of his writhing. Deliberately, without hurrying, she puts her needle-like stinger into each segment of his body going in order from ring to ring from up to down, each one in the precise place where the caterpillar has it's nerves. She then squeezes his brain so that the caterpillar goes into a coma and then drags him to the nest. She puts the caterpillar into a chamber and lays one egg on it. The entire operation is so perfect ,exactly enough poison to keep the victim alive but immobile so that the flesh does not putrefy, that when the egg hatches, the larva can feed on fresh meat eating the live caterpillar bit by bit till the larva grows into an adult wasp. Could an untaught human be so prefect in her hunting skills ? Some wasps put as many as forty spiders per larva.

Here is a story about the drama in nature. The Alcon blue butterfly layers her eggs near an ant nest. The caterpillar exudes a smell like the ant's and they carry it off to their nest as one of their own , feeding and grooming it. The ichneumon wasp wants the caterpillar for her own babies. So she enters the nest and sprays a chemical that causes the ants to fight with each other ( America, are you listening. Why not just use a spray in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya). In the confusion, it finds the caterpillar and injects an egg into it. Once the ants come back to normal, they continue to feed and groom the caterpillar and in a few days what emerges from it's torn body is a wasp baby.

Female bee wolf digger wasps have colonies of bacteria that inhabit their antennae. When their babies turn into cocoons, the mothers inject them with these bacteria , which scientists have now found to be antibiotic. This is the first non human case of prophylactic antibiotics to fight infections found so far.

Female workers help the queen wasp in increasing the population of the nest by laying eggs but as soon as the nest fills up, the workers become sterile. If only humans could and would do that!

When wasps die , they are helpful to the end. They release a smell warning other wasps of the lurking dangers and as indicators that help is needed.

There is only one way in which the wasp is like the human. Some occasionally feed on fermented fruit, get drunk, fight and pass out. Oh yes, and they like sugar fixes.

The wasp is an important source of food for dragonflies, beetles, moths, birds, bears, badgers, bats, weasels, rat and of course the Chinese. So be kind to a species that is not just smarter than you but much more useful.