Vespula germanica loses its sting like Apis mellifera

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ИНО, 15.08.2022 5:53

I thought I knew a lot about public wasps... until last night.

I caught all sorts of animals on the balcony, including vespula workers. Mostly vulgaris who behave quite peacefully. But the evil Germanics, as it turned out, also caught up. Already entering the apartment, I feel that someone is climbing in the beard. I thought it was a cicada (these bastards have been drinking blood lately). And it turned out to be Germanica. And did not fail to sting. It was a good thing that it wasn't in her face, but in the finger of the hand with which I started to take her out. I look at my finger, dumbfounded by this surprise, and the wasp sits and seems to want to take out its sting, but it can't, and so on for half a minute. I had to help with the second hand. It came out tight, you can say, with a creak-clearly something clung to the inside of the skin. I was a little surprised by this fact-usually relatively smooth wasp stings come out very easily (so much so that sometimes the wasp manages to sting a couple of times in different places in a second) - well, come on, I took it out on the balcony and let it go.

I come back - I feel a prick in my leg. I don't know if it was the same wasp or another similar one that got into the flip-flop, and, of course, it stung. And again sits, the sting can not pull out. And there was just a camera at hand - I decided to capture it. Having captured it, so as not to be stung for the third time, he took tweezers and began to gently pull exactly against the direction of the stinger's entrance. Then the most unexpected thing happened: the sting, along with the poison gland reservoir and some other offal, was left in the wound. As I watch, the reservoir continues to shrink, pumping venom into my leg, just like a honeybee's.

I took a quick picture of this strange phenomenon and pulled it out with tweezers, because the skin around the stinger was already beginning to swell. As a result, the photos did not come out very well, but they will do for fixing the fact. The main question is: is this described at all?

This post was edited by ENO-08/15/2022 05: 58

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Comments

15.08.2022 13:23, AVA

I thought I knew a lot about public wasps... until last night.

I caught all sorts of animals on the balcony, including vespula workers. Mostly vulgaris who behave quite peacefully. But the evil Germanics, as it turned out, also caught up. Already entering the apartment, I feel that someone is climbing in the beard. I thought it was a cicada (these bastards have been drinking blood lately). And it turned out to be Germanica. And did not fail to sting. It was a good thing that it wasn't in her face, but in the finger of the hand with which I started to take her out. I look at my finger, dumbfounded by this surprise, and the wasp sits and seems to want to take out its sting, but it can't, and so on for half a minute. I had to help with the second hand. It came out tight, you can say, with a creak-clearly something clung to the inside of the skin. I was a little surprised by this fact-usually relatively smooth wasp stings come out very easily (so much so that sometimes the wasp manages to sting a couple of times in different places in a second) - well, come on, I took it out on the balcony and let it go.

I come back - I feel a prick in my leg. I don't know if it was the same wasp or another similar one that got into the flip-flop, and, of course, it stung. And again sits, the sting can not pull out. And there was just a camera at hand - I decided to capture it. Having captured it, so as not to be stung for the third time, he took tweezers and began to gently pull exactly against the direction of the stinger's entrance. Then the most unexpected thing happened: the sting, along with the poison gland reservoir and some other offal, was left in the wound. As I watch, the reservoir continues to shrink, pumping venom into my leg, just like a honeybee's.

I took a quick picture of this strange phenomenon and pulled it out with tweezers, because the skin around the stinger was already beginning to swell. As a result, the photos did not come out very well, but they will do for fixing the fact. The main question is: is this described at all?

In my experience, I can confirm that wasps can leave a sting in the wound. And not only V. germanica, but also V. vulgaris and, especially, D. saxonica. This usually happened when the injection was applied to an area with sufficiently "thick" skin. For example, the knee, elbow, and fingertips. Unfortunately, I was not able to assess on the spot exactly which parts were being removed along with the sting machine, and whether there was a nerve ganglion there. like bees.

Likes: 1

16.08.2022 17:51, ИНО

Yes, I read in English Pedivikii that e "Yellowjacket" is still "occasionally a stinger becomes lodged and pulls free of the wasp's body", but without details, indications of specific types and references. That is, the phenomenon is well-known, although it is positioned as exceptional.

Stung in the upper surface of the foot, I can't say that I have a particularly rough skin there. I've kept the sting and what's left on it, so I'll try to soak it and look for the ganglion. However, there are not all the giblets that came out of the wasp, some of them broke off from the stinger and were lost somewhere. But the venomous apparatus separated from the wasp functioned very effectively - the muscles contracted, continuing to pump venom. It's a pity that I didn't think to shoot it on the video, but only on the photo. Together with the nicks on the sting, I take this as clear evidence that this phenomenon is not an accidental injury, but a clear adaptation to the defense of the nest from vertebrates, the same as in the honey bee. Polistov, who stung me an order of magnitude more often, this is definitely not the case.