Latest Vespidae Stories
New research delivers a sting in the tail for queen wasps. Scientists have sequenced the active parts of the genome – or transcriptome – of primitively eusocial wasps to identify the part of the genome that makes you a queen or a worker. Their work, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Biology, shows that workers have a more active transcriptome than queens. This suggests that in these simple societies, workers may be the 'jack-of-all-trades' in the colony -...
As warmer temperatures hit the Sacramento region, yellow jackets are emerging from hibernation and beginning their annual nest building. Local pest control company and bug experts Specialized Pest Patrol are reporting an increased call rate for yellow jacket nest sightings by home owners and property owners alike. Sacramento, CA (PRWEB) February 15, 2013 As warmer temperatures hit the Sacramento region, yellow jackets are emerging from hibernation and beginning their annual nest building....
The social lives of ants, wasps and bees have long been a puzzle to scientists. How did complex insect societies — colonies ruled by a queen and many workers — come to be? A new model adds to discontent with old ideas. Social insect society is divided into specialized castes that take on different roles within the nest. Most of the members of a colony – the workers – forego their own chance for reproduction and instead spend their lives raising offspring that aren't their own....
Latest Vespidae Reference Libraries
A wasp is any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is not a bee, sawfly, or an ant. The less familiar suborder Symphyta includes the sawflies and wood wasps, which differ from the Apocrita by having a broad connection between the thorax and abdomen. Also, Symphyta larvae are mostly herbivorous and "caterpillarlike", whereas those of Apocrita are largely predatory or parasitic. Most familiar wasps belong to the Aculeata, a division of the Apocrita whose ovipositors are...
Spider wasps, also called pompilid wasps or spider-hunting wasps, are insects belonging to a diverse family named Pompilidae, of the order Hymenoptera. Spider wasps are sometimes distinct from other wasps in features such as eye structure (no notch as in Family Vespidae), legs modified for grooming, and in having a groove dividing the mesopleuron (a region of the thorax) into halves. Larvae can also be identified by physical examination. Females are often larger than the males, with...
A wasp is any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is not a bee, sawfly, or an ant. Less familiar, the suborder Symphyta includes the sawflies and wood wasps, which differ from the Apocrita by having a broad connection between the thorax and abdomen. Also, Symphyta larvae are mostly herbivorous and "caterpillar-like", whereas those of Apocrita are largely predatory or parasitic. Most familiar wasps belong to the Aculeata, a division of the Apocrita whose ovipositors...
Yellowjackets are black-and-yellow wasps of the genus Vespula or Dolichovespula (though some can be black-and-white, the most notable of these being the baldfaced hornet, Dolichovespula maculata). They can be identified by their distinctive combination of black-and-yellow color, small size (slightly larger than a bee), and entirely black antennae. Like some other vespids, they live in colonies and build globular paper nests. Workers are around 12-20 mm in length, depending on species, and...
The vespidae are a family of wasps, including all social wasps and some solitary wasps. Each social wasp colony includes a queen and a number of sterile workers. Colonies dye at the onset of winter after a one year lifespan. New queens and males (drones) are produced towards the end of the summer, and after mating, the queens overwinter in cracks or other sheltered locations. The nests are constructed out of plant fibers, chewed to form a sort of paper.
