A black anchor or arrowhead mark on its face, where its commonest relative has three separate black dots
Common wasp versus German wasp (Vespula germanica) — the clypeal mark is the standard separation.
Nature · Insects & other invertebrates
Common wasp
Colonies annual, April–November · workers 12–17 mm
Vespula vulgaris — Vespidae (social wasps)
The black-and-yellow wasp of the British late summer, and a far better insect than its reputation allows: a colony feeds its grubs on caterpillars, aphids and flies, and the Natural History Museum estimates that Britain's social wasps take some 14 million kilograms of insect prey each summer. The face mark settles the species — an anchor or arrowhead on the clypeus, where the German wasp has three dots. The nuisance in August has a cause: the queen stops laying, the larvae stop producing the sugary secretion the workers live on, and the workers go looking for sugar elsewhere.
How to spot them
- ▸Black and yellow, medium-sized, with a sharply waisted body and a smooth, hairless look
- ▸Face mark: a black anchor or arrowhead shape on the clypeus (the German wasp has three separate black dots)
- ▸Papery nest of grey chewed-wood pulp, in a cavity — loft, wall, bank or old rodent hole
- ▸Two pairs of wings, long elbowed antennae, a working sting — not a hoverfly
- ▸Turns to sweet things in late summer and autumn, when it becomes a picnic nuisance
How to know it
Adults live on sugar alone; the insect prey they catch is chopped up and fed to the grubs
Common wasp — Britain's social wasps take an estimated 14 million kilograms of insect prey a summer (Natural History Museum).
It becomes a nuisance in August because the queen has stopped laying and the workers have lost their supply of sugary larval secretion
Common wasp — the classic explanation for the late-summer change in behaviour.
It builds its nest from wood scraped off fences and chewed into a grey papery pulp
Common wasp — an independent invention of paper, long before humans.
Every colony dies each autumn except the newly mated queens, which hibernate alone in lofts and burrows
Common wasp — the annual colony cycle of a temperate social wasp.
Introduced accidentally to New Zealand, it and its relative strip caterpillars from native forests
Common wasp — a serious invasive in a country with no native social wasps.
Quick-fire facts
- •Vespula vulgaris; the closely similar German wasp is Vespula germanica
- •Natural History Museum: social wasps in the UK capture an estimated 14 million kilogrammes of insect prey each summer
- •Adult wasps feed only on sugars — nectar, honeydew, fruit and a sugary liquid secreted by their own larvae
- •The face mark is diagnostic: common wasp an anchor or arrowhead on the clypeus, German wasp three black dots
- •The nest is built of wood pulp chewed into paper; a large nest can hold thousands of workers
- •Colonies are annual in Britain: only mated queens overwinter, in sheltered places such as lofts and animal burrows
- •Unlike a honey bee, a wasp does not leave its sting behind and can sting repeatedly; the honey bee's barbed sting tears away and kills it
- •Where common and German wasps have been introduced to New Zealand they strip caterpillars from forests, with knock-on declines in native birds
- •Wasps also pollinate incidentally while taking nectar, and are apex invertebrate predators — the NHM's Dr Gavin Broad notes that wasps doing badly is a sign something is wrong
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Sources
- Natural History Museum — What do wasps do?
- Paul D. Brock — Britain's Insects: A Field Guide to the Insects of Great Britain and Ireland