{"id":345,"date":"2009-06-22T14:06:59","date_gmt":"2009-06-22T20:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=345"},"modified":"2009-06-22T18:19:49","modified_gmt":"2009-06-23T00:19:49","slug":"summer-wasps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=345","title":{"rendered":"Summer Wasps"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have many kinds of wasps (many more kinds than I knew existed when we moved here!\u00a0 I thought all black wasps were mud daubers–and there was only one kind.\u00a0 I thought all red wasps were hornets, and the common small yellow-and-brown striped wasp was a yellow-jacket…and that was it.)<\/p>\n

But the scariest of our wasps, to me, was the big, multicolored wasp that seemed determined to get into the vans and then–if I didn’t get it out before starting–buzzed around busily, bumping into windows and sometimes me.<\/p>\n

\"wasp0831\"This Northern Paper Wasp,\u00a0 Polistes fuscatus<\/em>, is a female,\u00a0 perched on some rotting leaves of water iris and sucking up water to take back and cool her nest.\u00a0\u00a0 I was quite close to her, to take the picture (though it is cropped–so not that close) and she never “buzzed” at me.\u00a0 Though these wasps used to terrify me, I’ve never been stung and now know that they can be gently urged out of the car or house.<\/p>\n

In a wetter year, when the dogbane flowers lasted longer,\u00a0 we had these, still not identified for sure [Edit: yes, they were–I misplaced the reference:\u00a0 a mason wasp, Monobia quadridens<\/em>.\u00a0 Publish post in haste, repent at leisure.]<\/p>\n

\"black-and-white_wasp-on-dogbane355\"<\/p>\n

These wasps show no interest in the photographer.\u00a0 Another handsome wasp in our area is the Great Golden Digger Wasp, Sphex ichneumoneus<\/em> (the females are busy excavating the holes in which they’ll lay eggs right now, though the picture was taken later in the year:<\/p>\n

\"wasp_on_goldenrod443\"<\/p>\n

After years of living around these and many more wasps, and realizing finally that they had lives to live that didn’t involve hunting me down to sting me, I’ve become a lot less scared of them, and a lot more interested in what those lives are like.\u00a0\u00a0 We do still knock down the nests of the paper wasps who think the front porch corner by the utility room door (the most used of our outside doors) is the right place to nest–and then resent our going in and out.\u00a0 But we let them nest elsewhere, because the irritable little P. exclamans<\/em> is a good control for webworms in the pecan trees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have many kinds of wasps (many more kinds than I knew existed when we moved here!\u00a0 I thought all black wasps were mud daubers–and there was only one kind.\u00a0 I thought all red wasps were hornets, and the common small yellow-and-brown striped wasp was a yellow-jacket…and that was it.) But the scariest of our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,4],"tags":[17,13,38,70],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-wildlife","tag-animal-behavior","tag-beauty","tag-insect","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":350,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}