When we arrived at our villa in Fuerteventura the first thing we did was to open up the large sun umbrella on the terrace. We were horrified to discover that inside there was a wasp nest!
The wasps were probably even more shocked when their cosy dark nest (accessed through the vents at the top of the umbrella) was suddenly exposed to the open air and daylight. Despite that they were not being aggressive and diligently and industriously went about their various tasks around the nest.
We think these are European paper wasps (Polistes dominula). The nest is constructed predominantly from paper pulp. Wood fibres are gathered locally from weathered wood, softened by chewing and mixing with saliva. The pulp is then used to make combs with hexagonal cells for brood rearing.
The queen started the nest off by attaching the first part of the nest to the underside of the umbrella by a centre stalk called a petiole. Around this centre stalk she adds cells, these are similar to the cells that can be seen within a beehive (although bees make their cells from wax).
The queen began to lay eggs in these cells and then, when the eggs had hatched, foraged for food to feed the larvae. Whilst in this initial stage she continued to build more cells. (As nests start to grow and there are young wasp larvae in the nest, the adults catch insect food for the larvae to eat. In turn, the wasp larvae turn parts of this insect food into a sugar and produce a sugary liquid which they feed back to the adult wasps).
A lot of effort also goes into water collection for keeping the nest at the desired temperature. If the nest starts to become overheated the wasps use water along with fanning their wings to keep the nest temperature even.
When the larvae are ready to pupate into adult wasps, they spin a silk cap over the top of their cell and pupate (just like a caterpillar into a butterfly), after a few weeks they have transformed into adult worker wasps and are sterile.
Even more interesting is another much larger wasp that we discovered nesting on the wall of the house.
This is a potter wasp (a solitary parasitic wasp - delta dimidiatipenne, the caterpillar hunting wasp). It is much larger than the previous wasps but it is equally diligent in building its nest.
Instead of using wood it collects sand ....
.... and water which it mixes together to a cement like consistency and creates a perfect urn shaped pot attached to a wall.
It lays a single egg inside the pot and then flies off to collect a fat green caterpillar.
The caterpillar is paralysed and threaded through the lip of the pot to provide food for the growing larva after it has hatched. The potter wasp then seals the pot and starts building another one and the process begins again!
INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT WASPS
Fact 1 - There are over 100,000 species of wasp which fall into one of two main categories: solitary wasps and social wasps.
Fact 2 - Wasps are very efficient pollinators and also beneficial for controlling insect pests. (Almost every pest insect species has at least one wasp species that preys upon it). It has been suggested that a single wasp nest will catch 5 metric tons of insects through the course of the summer.
Fact 3 - Adult wasps do not eat insects as they only have mouth parts suitable for sucking liquid such as nectar. However they do catch insects for their larvae to eat.
Fact 4 - Wasps do not reproduce via mating flights like bees. Instead social wasps reproduce between a fertile queen and male wasp; in some cases queens may be fertilized by the sperm of several males. After successfully mating, the male's sperm cells are stored in a tightly packed ball inside the queen.
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