63 replies to this topic

[Ants_Texas]

Hand taming a wasp queen? I'm extremely confused and I really want to try this lol.

[Connectimyrmex]

Vespula and Polistes queens have very good facial-recognition. Feeding a foundress sugary liquids would get her to appreciate you and accept you into the colony. 
Apparently this works better with Polistes, I'll have to try out for myself!
 

I removed one of my Vespula queens from hibernation (2 months is enough, right?) as an experiment. Turns out Vespula species love super worms. This queen happily tore apart a pre-killed super worm I gave her.

[Ants_Texas]

Vespula and Polistes queens have very good facial-recognition. Feeding a foundress sugary liquids would get her to appreciate you and accept you into the colony. 
Apparently this works better with Polistes, I'll have to try out for myself!
 

I removed one of my Vespula queens from hibernation (2 months is enough, right?) as an experiment. Turns out Vespula species love super worms. This queen happily tore apart a pre-killed super worm I gave her.

I've only known wasps and hornets to be relentless creatures all my life. Guess it's because I only get to see workers.

[MegaMyrmex]

I want a queen so bad, I actually found a queen polistes by my school but I wasn't able to catch it so I let it crawl into leaf litter so that it would be able to hibernate.

[Connectimyrmex]

Aw, that stinks. I actually found my newer one at my school on a wall. I coaxed her into my lunch box, and I managed to spook a friend during lunch

[Ants_Texas]

Come on man, pictures! iPhone pictures are fine as long as there's proper lighting.

[Connectimyrmex]

Pictures coming today after school

[Ants_Texas]

Pictures coming today after school

Pictures?

[Connectimyrmex]

I'm sorry, camera's not working

[Connectimyrmex]

The Polistes queens are surprisingly resilient. They've been hibernating fine in near freezing temperatures.

[Connectimyrmex]

U P D A T E ! ! ! ! !

So, I ended up releasing my fuscatus queen. Nearly right after that, I found a Polistes dominula queen with a nest! She's doing great! She hasn't been taking any protein yet. 

 

I then found a Vespula germanica queen in the same spot a couple days later, also with nest. She's also doing great, and it's ridiculous watching her squeeze in and out of her little ball-shaped nest 

[Connectimyrmex]

Welp I just got stung (three times) ! 
From this, I'm pretty sure that a yellow jacket sting hurts less than a bee sting.

[TennesseeAnts]

That is crazy! I found a Polistes sp. queen and nest in my mailbox! I might try to catch her.... And the thing about the stings makes sense. Bee stingers are barbed to keep them in so as much venom as possible is injected. Wasp stingers are not barbed so they can sting repeatedly without getting their stingers ripped out, like ant stingers.

Edited by Ant_Dude2908, May 14 2018 - 9:02 PM.

[Connectimyrmex]

Good luck catching her! Try to coax her into a ziploc bag before removing the nest, because paper wasp stings definitely hurt a bit more than bee stings 

 

Also, you are totally right, bees normally inject more venom at once than wasps (hence the pain).

[TennesseeAnts]

Yeah.... About that nest... I'm not allowed to keep wasps yet sooo, I had to spray it. Ants are the only wasps I can keep for now.

Edited by Ant_Dude2908, May 15 2018 - 6:48 PM.

[Connectimyrmex]

I caught a new Polistes queen (Polistes fuscatus) with a nest! There's this one spot in a picnic building sheltered under a roof outcropping that has a bunch of nests, so I might go back and collect a few in the future. So far, the new queen isn't really warming up to me.

 

My dominula queen, on the other hand, is pretty tame now! She accepts mashed up ant larvae from a toothpick (when I offer it from my finger she just climbs on and sits). Also, some of her eggs hatched! She's got 3 medium-sized larvae, 2 tiny ones, and a bunch of eggs.

[Canadian anter]

The fact that you have a "tame wasp" tells me that you're the next waspman. Also, apparently they get a lot more aggressive as they grow, just like ants.

[Connectimyrmex]

Haha, thanks 

 

You are right about Polistes getting aggressive when their colonies get larger. Once mine has more than five-ten workers, I'm probably going to let them do all the eating by themselves

My P. dominula queen has gigantic larvae, and the queen now accepts and hunts a far wider variety of insect foods. My fuscatus queen has three tiny larvae, and the only food she really accepts is sawfly larvae.

[Enderz]

Hawaiiant we want pictures, it makes the journal more interesting and is good for explaining things.

[Connectimyrmex]

I tried to take a picture but my queen swooped down and started attacking my phone case 

She's calmed down a lot, and I'll take some pics soon. 

 

The main queen of this journal, the Polistes dominula queen, has three capped brood chambers (so three pupae!) and a whole ton of growing larvae.