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Wasps in the Bookshelf
Jul. 18th, 2006 11:47 amSuddenly there are wasps in the bookshelf in the upstairs bathroom. (See this photoset at Flickr for all the pictures you could possibly desire.)
The wasps in these photos have a black body with three widely-spaced yellow stripes, a waist that isn’t excessively tapered or extended, black (or at least very dark) wings and club-like rather than curled antennae. What they seem to be storing in their nest-cells – actually the bracket-holes of the bookshelf! – are immature froghoppers (Philaenus spumarius), a species of small cicada. The cells are then sealed over with mud brought either from our own garden pond or from the small lake in the meadow behind our house.
However...
The only photograph (on Dave Element’s Wildlife Web Page, one of the more comprehensive pictorial sites) which even vaguely resemble “our” wasps is this:
http://www.david.element.ukgateway.net/hymenoptera5diggerwasps.htm,
the "Digger Wasp", Cerceris rybyensis. Unfortunately the website photo doesn’t give a clear view of the antennae, but the shape and position of the two stripes (is there an unseen third one under all that mud?) is similar to our bookshelf wasps. Though this is called a "digger" wasp, they may regard the bracket-holes on the shelf as pre-fab dwellings; certainly the way they close off each one with mud matches what they'd do with a self-made nest in a sandbank.
We have a copy of John Crompton’s “The Hunting Wasp” (Collins 1948) which is probably well out of date but nonetheless very entertaining for extremely amateur insect-watchers such as ourselves. (John C. was the brother of Richmal Crompton, author of the “Just William” stories, and it’s obvious that they shared a similar sense of humour.) He has a lot of fun gently teasing the behaviour of French naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre, whose books “Hunting Wasps” and “More Hunting Wasps” are easily available on-line; Fabre, it seems, was more, er, demonstrative and enthusiastic than dignified when it came to his field of study...
Crompton suggests that froghopper-hunting wasps are usually Harpactus
or Gorytes, but we haven’t turned up a photo of either.
We’d be grateful for any information from amateur (or professional) entomologists or hymenoptrists about what these harmless little creatures might be: they make a pleasant change from the inhabitants of the humming Vespula vulgaris nest under the holly tree. So far the common wasps haven’t bothered us, and we haven’t bothered them, but any nonsense and in the words of B. Bunny Esq., “This means war!”
The wasps in these photos have a black body with three widely-spaced yellow stripes, a waist that isn’t excessively tapered or extended, black (or at least very dark) wings and club-like rather than curled antennae. What they seem to be storing in their nest-cells – actually the bracket-holes of the bookshelf! – are immature froghoppers (Philaenus spumarius), a species of small cicada. The cells are then sealed over with mud brought either from our own garden pond or from the small lake in the meadow behind our house.
However...
The only photograph (on Dave Element’s Wildlife Web Page, one of the more comprehensive pictorial sites) which even vaguely resemble “our” wasps is this:
http://www.david.element.ukgateway.net/hymenoptera5diggerwasps.htm,
the "Digger Wasp", Cerceris rybyensis. Unfortunately the website photo doesn’t give a clear view of the antennae, but the shape and position of the two stripes (is there an unseen third one under all that mud?) is similar to our bookshelf wasps. Though this is called a "digger" wasp, they may regard the bracket-holes on the shelf as pre-fab dwellings; certainly the way they close off each one with mud matches what they'd do with a self-made nest in a sandbank.
We have a copy of John Crompton’s “The Hunting Wasp” (Collins 1948) which is probably well out of date but nonetheless very entertaining for extremely amateur insect-watchers such as ourselves. (John C. was the brother of Richmal Crompton, author of the “Just William” stories, and it’s obvious that they shared a similar sense of humour.) He has a lot of fun gently teasing the behaviour of French naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre, whose books “Hunting Wasps” and “More Hunting Wasps” are easily available on-line; Fabre, it seems, was more, er, demonstrative and enthusiastic than dignified when it came to his field of study...
Crompton suggests that froghopper-hunting wasps are usually Harpactus
or Gorytes, but we haven’t turned up a photo of either.
We’d be grateful for any information from amateur (or professional) entomologists or hymenoptrists about what these harmless little creatures might be: they make a pleasant change from the inhabitants of the humming Vespula vulgaris nest under the holly tree. So far the common wasps haven’t bothered us, and we haven’t bothered them, but any nonsense and in the words of B. Bunny Esq., “This means war!”
