If you have ever been to a country house at least once in your life, you must have met wasps. These insects often build their nests in the most unexpected places, sometimes turning a harmless veranda into a restricted area. Meanwhile, the inhabitants are not aware of their diet.
And in fact: what do wasps eat? After all, these are not bees, and therefore they were not noticed in a special love for flowers.
Oddly enough, but wasps can rightfully be called omnivorous, as their diet is extremely diverse. Adults eat nectar, fruits, feed on the secret of aphids. But they eat insects in considerable quantities, and their larvae feed only on them.
Most of what wasps eat consists of a “vinaigrette,” which includes many pests. The average colony of these insects, settled near your garden, is capable of exterminating more than a kilogram of parasites in a season.
When it comes time for the female to lay her eggs, she stings some large enough insect, injecting so much poison into the wound so that the prey does not die, but plunges into a peculiar lethargic dream.
After that, the “canned food” is transferred to the nest, the female lays eggs directly on the victim’s body, and then flies away. Hatched larvae eat their food supply alive. As a rule, for its entire
life cycle, one wasp makes at least a dozen such nests. And what wasps of other species eat?
Some of their varieties eat exclusively caterpillars, while laying their eggs in them. Larvae grow very quickly, only after a couple of weeks turning into adults (adults). Despite the growth rate, the formed insects leave their nest only the next year. The size of their population directly depends on what the wasps eat: if this year there are a lot of pests, many of these predators will appear
In France, there are some subspecies that only spiders recognize as their food. Moreover, these wasps (species from the genus Priocnemis) often choose spiders that are several times larger than themselves. The method of such hunting is very interesting: the victim is driven out of his den, after which its central nerve node is struck with jewelry accuracy. The poison of these insects is so strong that it can even paralyze a rather large mouse.
Not so much their way of feeding is interesting: many varieties of
road wasps do not have males. All individuals are females laying eggs, from which female individuals again emerge. However, the common way for everyone is still a way of feeding the larvae: regardless of the species, they eat “canned food” carefully prepared by their mother.
By the way, hornets , not too popular in our area , whose bite can be fatal, are also aspen relatives. These "animals" prey even on very large locusts, beetles, and sometimes even kill small birds and rodents. Due to the powerful poison, they do not lack food. Mining is literally torn apart by powerful stings and swallowed. Larvae feed on a burped, semi-digested mass.
Despite the terrifying properties of their poison, many farmers have not recently expelled, but only welcome the appearance of such insects in their possessions: they eat a lot of pests, allowing you to do without pesticides.
So you found out what wasps eat.