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These wasps are all about making paper, much the way a factory produces the stuff, and building a colony around a single female queen. Paper wasps construct massive paper nests, which house thousands of wasps all working together for the good of the group. Armed with stings that are loaded with painful venom, worker wasps defend their nest and their queen to the death.

Get to Work: Worker paper wasps feed on nectar, and also have to supply food for the larvae and queen, which need extra nutrients. To feed them, workers hunt and kill insects and insect larvae to feed their colony-mates.

Smell the Alarm! Paper wasps are very protective of their colonies. When a single wasp stings a potential threat, it also gives off a chemical scent that alerts the others in the nest, which swarm out to attack the enemy with their venomous stings.

Colony of One[]

Paper Wasps Back Image

Many wasps crowd into "paper" nests.

When starting out, a queen paper wasp does all the work to establish her colony. She uses her thick jaws to scrape wood from branches, mixes the wood with her saliva and chews the mixture into a sticky type of paper. Using this material, she builds a beehive-like nest with a few chambers and lays eggs inside. The wasp then hunts insects to feed her larvae until they mature into workers. From there she can relax, lay more eggs and let the first generation of workers expand the nest and feed the new grubs. A paper wasp colony can eventually grow to 10,000 members and last for up to 25 years.

Queen Me: A few paper wasp eggs hatch into young queens. Most go off to start their own colonies, but if the old queen is weak, a young queen might kill her and take over the existing colony.

Insect Wars: One enemy that paper wasps can't fight well is the army ant. The ants are too small to target with stings, so they are able to invade a colony and steal many of the wasps' larvae.

It's Our House, Mister[]

  1. Seeking a shady place to make her nest, a young queen paper wasp begins building under the overhang of a roof. A few months later, the resident of the house notices the nest and tries to knock it down with a stick.
  2. The wasp colony has had enough time to produce several workers, which immediately go after the man threatening their nest. The workers sting the man repeatedly on his face and arms, driving him away from their home.

Trading Card[]

Trivia[]

  • The knowledge card says Paper Wasps. The trading card says Paper Wasp.
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