Beware!

Beware Earl Plato
Bees, yellow jackets, and wasps - the female side of our family are not too happy about their presence at anytime. They have had allergic reactions to their stings. Late summer and family picnics seems to high light the Hymenopteras greater appearances. Yes, I have been stung several times but fortunately no problems. This article is about wasps. I have always been fascinated with them. At the rental cabin near Kincardine I watched for a few summers these wasps at work under the cottage eves. My nature writer mentor, Ed Teale, shared the following: “The sun glints on the burnished black body of the mud wasp and on its legs marked with white. Clutched in those legs, it carries its paralyzed prey. Always the prey is the same - a spider.”
Writer’s note: Every year at Marcy Woods on the Upper Trail in late August you meet Orb spiders - hundreds of them and their wondrous webs. Back down the trail at the old Marcy cabin someone had knocked down the five mud wasp nests. Scattered on the ground were the broken hard shells in which dead spiders were exposed.
“With quick, nervous movements, it drags its victim into one of the tubes. Then it reappears and is airborne in an instant. With in each tube the space is divided by masonry partitions into smaller cells. Beginning at the end, the wasp crams in its prey, lays an egg on the close-packed mass of spiders, then walls them in. This process is repeated until all the space in the tube is occupied.”
Writer’s note: Who seems to do all the work? The female mud wasp.
“Within each cell a larva hatches from the deposited egg, gorges itself on spiders and pupates. The adult that emerges bites its way to freedom through the hard shell of the tube.”
Writer’s note: What about the male mud wasp? Among Hymenoptera it has an “exceptional” purpose.
“ The male mud wasp stands guard over the partially stocked tubes while the female is away hunting spiders. If the nests were left unguarded at such times small parasitic wasps of the genus Chrysis would dart into the mud wasp cells and lay their eggs on the food collected for the mud wasp larvae.”
Note: Not a bad deal for the male mud wasp, eh? Human kind the woman goes to work and brings in the pay check. The man stays home and guards the children. It works for the mud wasps. Be observant in nature.