Yesterday afternoon, while sitting outdoors, my wife and I noticed a large black wasp that was scurrying across the driveway. It soon became evident that it was dragging a dead or paralyzed cricket toward a mulched area next to the pavement.
This was a great black wasp, found across North America, from southeastern Canada to Mexico; it is a resident of all of the Lower 48 States except Washington and Oregon. Females dig a hole in the soil in which they lay a single, fertilized egg; they then capture a grasshopper, cricket or katydid, paralyze it and place it in the nest cavity, repeating the process multiple times throughout the warmer months. Once the egg hatches, the larval grub feeds on the hapless victim until it is mature enough to pupate. Adults emerge from the pupae and spend much of the summer feasting on nectar; in the process, they pollinate a variety of flowers.
Of course, most of this life cycle is unnoticed by humans. Gardeners may encounter great black wasps as they move among flower beds but yesterday's encounter was pure luck on our part. Unaggressive, these wasps rarely sting humans (unless threatened) and play an important role in controlling grasshopper and cricket populations. Their means of feeding larvae may seem cruel but nature's web of life is not always pretty to behold.
This was a great black wasp, found across North America, from southeastern Canada to Mexico; it is a resident of all of the Lower 48 States except Washington and Oregon. Females dig a hole in the soil in which they lay a single, fertilized egg; they then capture a grasshopper, cricket or katydid, paralyze it and place it in the nest cavity, repeating the process multiple times throughout the warmer months. Once the egg hatches, the larval grub feeds on the hapless victim until it is mature enough to pupate. Adults emerge from the pupae and spend much of the summer feasting on nectar; in the process, they pollinate a variety of flowers.
Of course, most of this life cycle is unnoticed by humans. Gardeners may encounter great black wasps as they move among flower beds but yesterday's encounter was pure luck on our part. Unaggressive, these wasps rarely sting humans (unless threatened) and play an important role in controlling grasshopper and cricket populations. Their means of feeding larvae may seem cruel but nature's web of life is not always pretty to behold.
