Sunday, September 19, 2021

A Wasp At Work

 

Here's a pretty paper wasp, the kind that makes those fan shaped nests of hexagonal cells you see under eaves and overhangs. It's scraping wood fibers from a fence post.




Click to enlarge and you can see under its chin the little ball of fibers it has accumulated. That gets broken down to a soft pulp in the wasp's mouth by saliva and will be used to build and expand a nest. 

Looks like hard work.

And here are a few wise words from Iris Shah: 

"A king who feared wasps once decreed they were abolished. As it happened, they did him no harm. But he was eventually stung to death by scorpions."

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