Yellow Jacket

Giant Ground Hornet

BIOLOGY

Bees, hornets, and wasps have complete metamorphosis: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Those which are social have a caste system composed of workers, queen(s), and males (drones). Although the workers are sterile females, they occasionally lay eggs or can sometimes assume reproductive functions if the queen dies. Colonies contain only the founding queen until mid-summer when many queens and males are produced; but honey bees have only one functional queen at a time. Paper wasps (Polistes spp. and Mischocyttarus spp.) are the exception in that nests are founded by a dominant inseminated female that assumes the role of egg layer. She is attended by other submissive females and daughter wasps that serve as workers. With the onset of cold weather, workers, non-inseminated queens, and males die off leaving the inseminated queens to overwinter and start new colonies in the spring. Honey bees are the exception where the entire colony including immatures, workers, and the queen overwinters. In the solitary bees and wasps, only the inseminated queen overwinters.

Adults of social species feed on nectar, honeydew, sap, fruit juices, etc. Protein for larvae comes from pollen for the bees but for the wasps and hornets, it consists of insects and spiders if the adults are predators, or meat if they are scavengers. Workers get some protein but mostly carbohydrates from the trophallactic fluid exuded by the larvae when fed. The larvae of solitary species get all their food from the paralyzed prey or pollen ball upon which their egg was laid and which is then usually sealed in a  cell.

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