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George's Great Gold Digger Wasp journal


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#1 Offline GeorgeK - Posted June 21 2018 - 11:06 AM

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So while looking for queens, i spotted one what looked like ant queen digging into ground. I took test tube and just slowly thrusted in ground around what i believe to be queen and scooped her up with dirt and closed test tube. After that i didn't think or look much ( it was about to rain, and i was far from home ) so i just put it in my bag and went back on getting home and looking for queens while I'm walking. When i got home i realized that i scooped up was in fact a wasp.

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Images after I got home

 

After little thinking, i decided to put her in test tube setup with dirt inside. I filled the test tube around halfway thru with dirt. I used rather large test tube because i wanted her to be able to dig quite a lot to feel safe.

 

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Pre-digging test tube

 

After setting up that test tube, i moved her inside that tube and gave her honey for sugar and fly/cricket since i did not know what she would prefer.

 

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Really just few pictures of her drinking sugar

 

After eating, she got straight to work and started digging. While its hard to picture it ( no contrast really, its all just dirt ) i noticed she is digging spirally around the test tube. She has moved quite a lot of dirt in short period of digging ( around 30 mintues )

 

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Post digging pictures

 

She also dug out a slightly larger chamber where she currently is. Thankfully chamber is visible when i remove cover of test tube ( i made a tight fitting bag out of paper and black duct tape for this test tube ).

 

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Very bad picture of wasp inside her chamber

 

While its hard to see in picture, chamber is quite visible when looked at with naked eye. Right now she still hasnt touched any food ( maybe because all i gave her was dead? ). Anyways, after searching a little i found out it is in fact GGD wasp and that they mostly grow their young by paralising katydids and burying them in their chambers. Tommorow i will go and find some live katydids that i will toss in tube and see if she reacts to them. I plan to release queen back into the wild in around 2 weeks, during which period i hope she will lay eggs on katydids.

I will post updates as there is something to update on.

 

 


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#2 Offline Zeiss - Posted June 21 2018 - 1:39 PM

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I believe these type of wasps will only make one burrow per egg, so you may need to provide more tubes for her.  I'm just basing this off of Ampulex compressa as well as some other species.



#3 Offline gcsnelling - Posted June 21 2018 - 2:53 PM

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This is not a great golden digger, either a Tiphiid or Scoliid. Both groups are parasitoids on beetle larva. Also please put the locality in the body of the text, not everyone looks over at your profile.


Edited by gcsnelling, June 21 2018 - 2:56 PM.

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#4 Offline GeorgeK - Posted October 18 2018 - 12:57 AM

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I completely forgot about this. After some time, I couldn't get wasp to take any food that wasn't honey, so I ended up releasing her in my garden.

As such, this journal is discontinued?






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