Wasp nests

  
.. And from accidental ingestion of a feeding wasp along with sweets, the destruction of the nearest nests still will not save, since it can fly from anywhere...

Everything is correct, excluding "ingestion". Polistov, unlike vespula, is not at all interested in human food, including sweets. So there is no such chance...

Well, why, polistov is quite interested in sweets, and meat too, although rarely (apparently individual inclinations of individual individuals). Another thing is that, unlike vespulas, they usually hesitate to fly into apartments through the window behind them, and if they suddenly fly in, they immediately forget about the purpose of the visit and start looking for a way out. But if it happens, for example, on an open veranda, then everything can be. Therefore, you need to carefully look at what you are going to put in your mouth.

Well, why, polistov is quite interested in sweets, and meat too, although rarely (apparently individual inclinations of individual individuals). Another thing is that, unlike vespulas, they usually hesitate to fly into apartments through the window behind them, and if they suddenly fly in, they immediately forget about the purpose of the visit and start looking for a way out. But if it happens, for example, on an open veranda, then everything can be. Therefore, you need to carefully look at what you are going to put in your mouth.

But this is news to me. I haven't seen such information anywhere. In addition, according to personal observations, among social vespids, such habits are peculiar only to vespulae and some hornets (orientalis, dybowskii, simillima). I specially conducted experiments, exposing bowls with different baits, but neither polisty nor dolichovestpuly never pecked at them.

What exactly is the news? In the fact that they fly for sweets, or in the fact that for meat? Such sources of carbohydrate food as honey, jam, cut fruit, in my opinion, no vespida misses, and polist in particular. Here on all sorts of cakes and other products of culinary chemistry really did not meet, unlike vespula. Meat (and maybe fish or minced meat) I saw how they bring pieces to the nest, but rarely. A similar case is described in Khalifman's book "Four-Winged Corsairs" based on the observations of Elena Grechka. He gave me minced chicken, fish-they only eat it on the way, the main thing is that they are unsalted and low-fat. But insects are still a priority.

What about crabro? They are the main fruit-eaters in the gardens, and they generally break into the brew in droves.

It should also be taken into account that the arrival or non-arrival of wasps on bait depends not only on their food preferences, but also on the availability of other food sources in the vicinity. So, while umbrella plants are blooming en masse, polysts are rarely found on fruits, but only just fade, and they are right there. I even compiled, let's say, a rating of the plants preferred by polists in our area, each position of which becomes attractive to them only if all the higher ones are unavailable.

This post was edited by ENO-24.03.2017 17: 48

Strange thing: I caught a wasp in the kitchen window today.





Sort of like, a Gorytes male. Where could it have come from, considering that the window was last opened in the fall, and in general, only lyrys are active from sfecid now? I wondered if it had come out of the dried hemlock stalks that I had recently brought in a considerable amount as blanks for the Fabre hives and placed just opposite that window. But after reading the literature, I found that gorites nest in the ground. And I haven't brought the land home in years. It's a bit of a mystery...

What exactly is the news? In the fact that they fly for sweets, or in the fact that for meat? Such sources of carbohydrate food as honey, jam, cut fruit, in my opinion, no vespida misses, and polist in particular. Here on all sorts of cakes and other products of culinary chemistry really did not meet, unlike vespula. Meat (and maybe fish or minced meat) I saw how they bring pieces to the nest, but rarely. A similar case is described in Khalifman's book "Four-Winged Corsairs" based on the observations of Elena Grechka. He gave me minced chicken, fish-they only eat it on the way, the main thing is that they are unsalted and low-fat. But insects are still a priority.

What about crabro? They are the main fruit-eaters in the gardens, and they generally break into the brew in droves.

It should also be taken into account that the arrival or non-arrival of wasps on bait depends not only on their food preferences, but also on the availability of other food sources in the vicinity. So, while umbrella plants are blooming en masse, polysts are rarely found on fruits, but only just fade, and they are right there. I even compiled, let's say, a rating of the plants preferred by polists in our area, each position of which becomes attractive to them only if all the higher ones are unavailable.

There is one caveat here. All these sweet tooths prefer fermented (!) sweets. But this is not our food, and they drink fermented tree or fruit juice to the state of drunks, so that they fall to the ground. The same goes for V. crabro.

Buckwheat's "observations" are not a pure experiment. When kept in captivity, polistas can be fed even greenhouse crickets, which they do not catch in nature.

Strange thing: I caught a wasp in the kitchen window today.

Sort of like, a Gorytes male. Where could it have come from, considering that the window was last opened in the fall, and in general, only lyrys are active from sfecid now? I wondered if it had come out of the dried hemlock stalks that I had recently brought in a considerable amount as blanks for the Fabre hives and placed just opposite that window. But after reading the literature, I found that gorites nest in the ground. And I haven't brought the land home in years. It's a bit of a mystery...

Overwintered and hatched out of a flower pot, and now I'm out of it because I'm stupid.

Do they spend the winter in their nests? If so, then this option disappears, all pots can only be accessed through a window that opened for a maximum of a couple of hours and then not every day. It is very doubtful that a female in such conditions would be able to dig and ventilate the nest, and even without being noticed by me. So the mystique remains. No one else broke in, not on that window or in the other room, where I moved a bunch of hemlock stalks.

Meanwhile, two female founders of Polistes dominula visited one of last year's nests on the loggia today. I took a picture of one of them, but I erased it by mistake, and then I made another record on top of it, so now we're done. But nothing, most likely, they will return again, and I hope not only them. From the junction box again, the boys tore out last year's dominula nest, everyone does not allow a multi-year multi-cell formation. But the wasps are ready to start all over again:

 

Do they spend the winter in their nests? If so, then this option disappears, all pots can only be accessed through a window that opened for a maximum of a couple of hours and then not every day. It is very doubtful that a female in such conditions would be able to dig and ventilate the nest, and even without being noticed by me. So the mystique remains. No one else broke in, not on that window or in the other room, where I moved a bunch of hemlock stalks.

Yes, in nests, at the pre-pupation stage. Males come out earlier than females for 1-1. 5 weeks.

From the junction box again, the boys tore out last year's dominula nest, everyone does not allow a multi-year multi-cell formation. But the wasps are ready to start all over again

Are you sure they're boys?" I periodically found uprooted nests around my suburban kitchen and couldn't figure out where they were coming from. Then I watched on purpose, and it turned out that it was chickadees and nuthatches pulling nests out from under the slate roof. Especially zealous vrazhiny-tits-big and "zhovto-blakitni" lazorevki.

With 99% confidence. There is also a school yard, children are constantly climbing, especially in the evenings. The nest disappeared without a trace, and it was already empty, there was no need for predators to drag it.

Today, as many as four females flew to the loggia, two of them got into a fight on last year's nest - a good sign.

I miscalculated yesterday: it turns out that not four dominoes arrived, but as many as five:



But today-none. The weather has deteriorated: cloudy in the first half of the day, sunny in the second half, but cool (+11) and windy. It's not a royal thing to fly in this weather.

Last night I met the first queen Vespula germanica of the season.

This post was edited by ENO-05.04.2017 17: 09

A most amusing incident happened to me today. I walk along the path that descends quite steeply to the spring. I see anoplius sitting there. Well, I sat down side by side, took out the camera, and began to wind up the macro nozzle. Still, getting close to this elusive wasp is a great success. Suddenly I notice that just above where she sat down, there is a spider paralyzed, and next to it-a fresh hole. Well, that's all, I think I've failed here - I'll capture the process of dragging a fart into a hole in all the details. But that wasn't the case. Anoplius starts running around, apparently looking for either a burrow or a spider, bumping down the path. So I waited for half an hour, but it was no use: the wasp was running around in circles on the ground, then it froze, then it was rolled even lower by the wind. I think that's all, it won't do any good and I'm going to leave. But then I notice a second female doing her own bird-picking in the same spot. Didn't they share one spider? I decide to wait and see what happens. Finally. after about an hour, one of the wasps finally found the spider and the burrow, and began to deepen the latter. But this unhurried process lasted for about half an hour without any signs of rapid completion. For comparison: last summer I watched bathyzonellus burying a spider, so it took him literally one minute, I didn't even have time to prepare the camera. I look: the second wasp pulls the spider down the clone, which means that both of them have lost a number of different spiders and each was looking for its own. Before I could reach it, another gust of wind hit, and the second wasp dropped the spider, sending them both tumbling down the path. Then, naturally ,the "search operation" started anew. It ended, by a miracle of luck, much faster than the first one - about 15 minutes, but now the wasp dragged the spider in the opposite direction-up the slope, and then turned and disappeared with it in the grass. I stayed behind to watch for the first female to come out of her hole to pick up the spider. I only went out for a minute to take pictures of a hefty kravchik who came into view. I come back - the spider is lying about 20 centimeters below the burrow along the path, and the wasp is generally a meter away. And then everything started all over again. He couldn't stand it any longer, and Anoplius lost much of his former enthusiasm, either tired or cold as the sun sank behind a large cloud, and spent more time resting than looking for prey. As a result, I took both the wasp and the prey home, took out a specially made insectarium for burrowing wasps that had been idle for more than 10 years, and I'll see what happens. Field photos turned out to be unintelligible: there is a wasp, there is a spider, there is a burrow, but the connection between all this is not particularly clear.

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I also photographed a tiny tetramorium ant with a very high self-esteem, trying to steal the wasp's prey while it was in its burrow.

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Colleagues are there any photos of the nests of this wasp from the territory of Russia???

Sceliphron deforme ssp. atripes (F. Morawitz, 1888)

The mystique continues: at the beginning of the week, the second male goritez was transferred. After all, the nests were really in a flower pot, thanks to AVA for the tip-off. But the paradox is that it was this pot that had been standing in the bedroom for the previous three years, where the window was generally taken away with a grid. The last time he spent the summer on the balcony was in 2013. They couldn't have waited that long, could they?

But today's discovery: hornets still sometimes drink nectar!





The second discovery was the size of this uterus - without exaggeration, the size of the little finger, both in length and thickness. Here, now I tried on my little finger - 52X15 mm came out. We'll throw out 2 just in case of fire, but 50 mm was absolutely accurate there. I almost got very close to her, and watched for quite a long time. therefore, the proverb "fear has big eyes" is not about this case. I used to think that the megascolia maculata was the largest wasp in our fauna, and I've seen a lot of them, but this hornet surpassed any other in length, and in mass-probably by a third, if not more. It's like some kind of tangerine! I resisted the selfish urge to catch and put them in the collection - let them live and raise the same giants better. It's just a pity that I didn't have a tape measure, ruler, or even a matchbox for scale with me this time. And the camera was in autofocus mode, so you can't get the exact scale from the pictures, alas. You'll have to take it at your word.

This post was edited by ENO-29.04.2017 00: 06

I also noticed a dynamic in the size of crabro queens, some of which are like normal working hornets, and some like sister mandarins. In our west, the temperature is now jumping, then +20, then +5, from vespid only polysts are active so far.

We've already got both vespulas looking for nesting sites in full swing. Polisty may have already laid the first nests, it will be necessary to check in the coming days.

As I expected, based on the weather and weather indicators, the laying of nests of Polistes nimpha and P. gallicus began. Usually, the first type lays them much earlier than the second, but this year the spring came out, let's say, compressed, so the laying took place almost simultaneously, within the past three days. But the nymph's nests are still much larger, as the females of this species put more effort into building during the first days of nest construction. The gallicuses will catch up later. But I don't know about the dominula: there are no nests on the loggia yet, although the females come every day, and I haven't looked for them in other places yet. Although with a probability close to 1, they should also already be there, since this is the earliest type of the three.

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We also had a dynamic spring in western Ukraine, and now the heat is more or less stable. I've already seen forest wasps collecting pulp, and polistov. Hornets are also flying with might and main, and some of them are already showing search behavior. Soon for the mother nests..



This post was edited by Roman Rakochy - 05/18/2017 23: 28

http://vespidae2012.narod.ru/hornet_cycle5.html

Today I found the elusive) we were also lucky to see the usurpation of the same nest - http://vespidae2012.narod.ru/media_cycle3.html

Dominulas and nymphs began to have new workers on their nests. I also noticed a foraging working vespula geramnica.

We are also doing well. - http://vespidae2012.narod.ru/hornet_cycle5.html

And we already have working hornets flying.

Hello everybody! Here's the truth: wasps fly, when you eat ice cream on the street, you think what an abomination. And recently I encountered them on my balcony, watched them, and my attitude towards these living creatures changed: they are brilliant creatures! On the balcony there is a cabinet for disposal. Under it, they set up their nest. We were lucky to have noticed them before they could reproduce. The nest was only one tier long. Very young individuals of working wasps, uterus and larvae. Tell me what kind of wasp it is.

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Whether it's vulgaris or germanica, it's hard to see. But only in such conditions they will not be able to live. At a minimum, the honeycomb should be turned upside down and hung so that there is an empty space at the bottom, and also attach a tube - "osoprovod", brought out of the house. Vespules, unlike polistes, adapt well to the movement of the nest and are rarely lost.

Whether it's vulgaris or germanica, it's hard to see. But only in such conditions they will not be able to live. At a minimum, the honeycomb should be turned upside down and hung so that there is an empty space at the bottom, and also attach a tube - "osoprovod", brought out of the house. Vespules, unlike polistes, adapt well to the movement of the nest and are rarely lost.

Vulgar, definitely.

Well, it was not worth touching this nest, they would have watched the foraging, and that's all, especially vulgaris - very peaceful wasps. I understand that there were no bites, and if it were germanics, given that there were already a dozen or two flight wasps, they would have set the heat
And now the OS type is no longer important, all the same in this state they are kapets.

Yes, the wasps were not aggressive. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to remove the nest so easily. The wardrobe had to be cleaned, the balcony cleared. Move. So they didn't leave it in the bank. They took me to the forest. The nest was not suspended, but turned upside down and placed in the hollow. Two days later I went to see it. The nest was turned upside down and no one was in it. Even maggots. But the nest was intact.

Congratulations: your wasps were devoured by some forest dweller.

But it seems that the tendency to large scale nests in our katamenes entrenched
In general, there are SO MANY interesting things there, it turns out, which are not written in the clever articles of our imperialist scientists ))
Really, very interesting wasps) And most importantly-there are SO MANY of their nests! They're everywhere) And even on very small rocks and even seemingly on the ground, nests that are easy to move, which means katamenes can start living in new places for them

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Congratulations: your wasps were devoured by some forest dweller.

I would not be afraid to specify that the resident was feathered. But who exactly, I can not say - from tits and nuthatches to woodpeckers lovers in the forest is full.

By the way, interestingly, in the articles of well-known local imperialists, information is circulating that Katamenes dimidiatus feed their larvae with scoop caterpillars. Moreover, some articles even attribute the exclusivity of such a diet. This data was also distributed to other resources on the Internet.
However, what our free European catamenes collect is somehow not at all similar to caterpillars / cocolki scoop

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Why doesn't it look like it? Pan joined the host of fans of photo puzzles, shot through the wall of the jar? If there aren't even dustpan caterpillars or butterflies at all, it doesn't mean that the Klyatomoskal imperialists lied in their articles. It's just that wasps with defining tables do not fly for hunting, but row everyone who fits the stereotype of prey in terms of habitat, behavior and habit. For example, discelia catch any leafworm larvae, and therefore in some places the contents of their cells can be represented by caterpillars, in others-sawfly false caterpillars, in the third - beetle larvae, in the fourth - a mixture of all of the above.. I once saw an ammolphila put an earthworm in its burrow, but that doesn't mean that those who described its prey diet as consisting of thin, long caterpillars are liars.

This post was edited by ENO-06.07.2017 19: 47

This is the first time I've seen this. I'd like to take a closer look at this nest. Moreover, it is one of the few that has a good chance of not meeting a hornet due to its specific location. Now on that site, about 2/3 of the laid nests have already been destroyed by a hornet. They started early this year.

After the death of the nest in the anthill, I decided to move the nest from the burrow to the box, so that I could still observe the development this year.
June 22 - July 5 photos.
It is noteworthy that the nest was usurped three times. Dead females were raked out of the bottom of the box in the last days of June. ( http://vespidae2012.narod.ru/hornet_cycle6.html )










This post was edited by Roman Rakochy - 06.07.2017 20: 17

This is such a difficult case .. It's scary to even imagine what's in the head of a person who sees lies everywhere, or accusations of lying, and what's in the head is scary to imagine, but the lifestyle is possible )))

Actually, the caterpillars and pupae in the jar do not look like caterpillars and pupae of a scoop, because the caterpillars and pupae of pigeons do not look like caterpillars and pupae of a scoop, oddly enough.

In addition, the sources indicate a variety of prey for wasps-discelia, but in the articles and sites I have viewed about katamenes (dimidiatus), foraging with scoops is indicated, and in general it is invariant.

There are also questions in connection with the ethology of catamenes, or rather their larvae, which turns out to feed for a reason, and correspondingly. wasps bring not anyhow what caterpillars and not in anyhow what quantities with an interval of one minute, such a concept as a narrow specialization of such wasps, the nuances are also associated with the peculiarity of the activity of most scoop caterpillars, and many other things.
But sofa iksperty, they are))

There is a true idea, dimidiatusov exactly two generations, maybe it turns out that the production in different cells is different, once and.. cells in some nuances are different

Wow! What hornets! ) And I'm still not lucky on the "higher" os, some pooooolists on the balcony ))) I found one single nest of German ones so far, and at the uterine stage, I thought - I'll wait a little and transfer it already with printed cells, I waited and waited.. I dug out the nest and the ants ate it)

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