Mountain Mint

This week I planted this little clustered mountain mint bush in the sunniest spot in my yard. I often hover over mountain mint plants in parks because insects love them. While they collect pollen and nectar, I have a chance to photograph them up close.  

Like this male Ammophila, a thread-waisted wasp, who seems to give new meaning to the name. Note the little patch of orange on his abdomen.

Or the lovely great golden digger wasp, so called for the golden hairs on its head and body. Click to enlarge. 

Here's hoping that my little plant will look like this in the future and attract many interesting wasps and other insects. 

Summer Wasps

 

Yesterday I took my camera into the garden to look for interesting insects. I was rewarded with two elegant orange-and-black wasps. This is a female great golden digger wasp, looking every bit a grand as her title. Click to enlarge.

This is a male Ammophila, a member of the thread-waisted wasp family, who seems to give new meaning to the term. Note the little patch of orange on his abdomen.

This one was moving quickly through the leaves of a mountain mint plant. She may have been hunting for food for future offspring. When a female great golden digger wasp is ready to lay eggs, she finds a small insect, stings it to paralyze it, picks it up and carries it away. She has previously prepared some small tunnels in the ground. She deposits the insect in a tunnel, lays an egg on it, seals the entrance and... repeats. When the wasp egg hatches, it feeds on the paralyzed insect. Despite that, and despite its dramatic appearance, this wasp is not aggressive towards humans.

This fellow won't be torturing any small insects, though females of his kind also catch and paralyze insects to provision burrow nests in the ground. Do you see the little spotted insect near the wasp's front feet? It's a tumbling flower beetle, so-called for its evasive maneuvers when disturbed or captured. I don't know if thread-waisted wasps fancy feeding tumbling flower beetles to their children, but I can't help feeling a little relieved on its behalf that it's next to a male thread-waisted wasp.

Thread-waisted Wasp

The season for photographing insects on flowers is coming to a close. Here's one of this year's last  -- the lovely thread-waisted wasp, Ammophila procera, shiny black with silver streaks on the thorax and a wide orange band around the center. Halloweeny color scheme, right? Click to enlarge.

This adult is drinking nectar at flowers but these wasps start life on quite a different diet. After mating, the female digs a burrow in soft ground or sand and then captures a caterpillar or other insect and stings in into paralysis. She places it inside the burrow, lays an egg on it, seals up the burrow, and leaves. A meal of fresh caterpillar will be waiting right there when the larval wasp hatches.

Thread-waisted Wasp

Here's a wasp that seems to give new meaning to the term thread-waisted. I saw this fine example of Eremnophila aureonatata while it was sipping nectar from a summersweet blossom (Clethra ainifolia) in a park in southern New Jersey. It's a solitary wasp, and a hunter at times. When it is time to reproduce, females of this species prepare a burrow for their eggs and then capture and sting a caterpillar, paralyzing it. You can sometimes see one dragging a fat caterpillar across the ground. The unfortunate caterpillar gets stuffed into the nest for the larvae to feed upon as they grow. Unlucky caterpillar. Beautiful wasp.

Click to enlarge.