How and what do wasps eat?

If you have ever been to a dacha in your life, you must have met wasps. These insects often build their nests in the most unexpected places, sometimes turning an innocuous veranda into a forbidden zone. Meanwhile, they know nothing about their diet.

And in fact: what do the wasps eat? After all, these are not bees, but because of the special love for the flowers they were not noticed.

Strange as it may seem, it is possible to call it was omnivorous with full right, as their diet is extremely diverse. Adult individuals eat nectar, fruit, eat the secret of aphids. But they eat insects in considerable quantities, and their larvae feed only on them.

Most of what the wasps eat, consists of "vinaigrette", which includes many pests. The middle colony of these insects, which have settled near your garden, is capable of exterminating not one kilogram of parasites per season.

When the female comes to lay eggs, she stings some large enough insect, injecting so much poison into the wound that the prey will not die, but plunges into a peculiar lethargic dream.

After that, the "canned food" is transferred to the nest, the female lays it right on the victim's body of the egg, then flies away. Hatching larvae eat up their provisions. As a rule, for one's entire life cycle, one wasp makes at least a dozen such nests. And what do the wasps of other species eat?

Some of their varieties eat exclusively caterpillars, they also lay their eggs. Larvae grow very quickly, only after a couple of weeks turning into adults (adults). Despite the growth rate, the formed insects leave their nest only the next year. From what the wasps eat, the number of their population depends directly: if there are many pests in the current year, many of these predators will appear

In France, there are some subspecies, which only recognize spiders as their food. And these wasps (species from the genus Priocnemis) often choose their prey for such spiders, which are several times larger than themselves. Very interesting is the very method of such hunting: the victim is driven out of his lair, after which its central nervous nerve is hit with a jeweler's precision. The poison of these insects is so strong that it is quite possible to paralyze even a fairly large mouse.

Interesting is not even their way of eating: many varieties of road wasps do not have males. All individuals are females laying eggs, of which again females are released. However, the common for all is the way to feed the larvae: regardless of the species, they eat carefully prepared by the mother "canned".

By the way, hornets, which are not very popular in our region , the bite of which can be fatal, are also aspen relatives. These "beasts" hunt even very large locusts, beetles, and sometimes even small birds and rodents are killed. Due to the powerful poison of lack of food they do not experience. The extraction is literally torn by powerful stings and swallowed. The larvae feed on the brewed semi-digested mass.

Despite the awesome properties of their poison, many farmers have not recently expelled, but only welcome the appearance of such insects in their possessions: they eat a lot of pests, allowing you to do without pesticides.

So you learned about what the wasps eat.