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Polistes fuscatus queen?

Hi! I'm new to the forum, so I hope I'm doing it right!

I'm doing a program on wasps, and one of them I'm featuring is the Northern Paper Wasp= Polistes fuscatus. I know the males have a yellow face and curly antennae, but what about the queen? Is there a way to tell the queen from the worker females?

Thanks!

Not easy but possible
There is no definitive way to separate gynes/fertilized females from workers by sight, unless you dissect them and check if they are fertilized or not. All female Polistes have the potential to mate and reproduce (unlike hornets and yellowjackets, in which there are true queens that are much different than the workers). The reproductive females tend to be larger than the workers, but this is not true all of the time.

Your best bet is to find a very young nest that only has one wasp on it. There might be several wasps that tend to this new nest; Eric described this process. When several mated females form a nest, it is called associative foundation, or pleometrosis. Haplometrosis is solitary foundation with one female.

As long as there are only eggs or young larvae in this nest (no pupae have hatched), almost always all of the wasps on the nest have reproductive potential (or "queens") since there are no workers present yet. Without dissection, this is the best method for separating reproductives from workers.

Also, the first workers will be noticeably smaller than the gyne and later workers since the foundress/gyne cannot nourish them that well as larvae since she is usually alone in doing the work (later in the colony's life the workers take over her duties, except for egg-laying, and the workers will be the normal size).

This is a theory, it may be a fact now, but the foundress can choose to not feed her first offspring enough so that they will not be able to compete with her for rule over the colony.

For more on identifying males, they have 13 antennal segments and 7 abdominal segments (as opposed to 12 and 6 in the female, respectively). As you mentioned, the yellow face and curled antennae are the easy way to spot them.

Hope this helps!

No.
Actually, paper wasps don't have a "queen," per se. The reproductive female individual in a given colony is called a "gyne." Please don't ask me how to pronounce that:-) Anyway, females overwinter, and go about founding a new coloney the next spring. Sometimes there is more than one "foundress" for a colony, but eventually only one will become dominant and begin laying eggs. Her subordinates either leave, or repress their own reproductive potential. I recommend getting a book on the evolution of social wasps for more information.

 
me again- another question!
OK.. I have noticed on a few pictures that the pronotum (?- the plate on top of the thorax)can be either blackish or brownish. Any significance? I'm thinking not, but I'm no expert- obviously! :)

 
wow!
Wow, that was fast! Thanks for the info. One book I was referencing refered to queens.... I guess that would be the dominant founder. Isnt' it fascinating how different each species is??? The more I learn, the more fascinated I'm becoming with these creatures.

And to think I used to be phobic of wasps...... go figure!

Thanks again!

 
What exactly are you doing? I
What exactly are you doing? I am currently raising the northern paper wasp. Boy they are fun. Your best bet is to wait till fall and get any foundress that come in with your plants or if you look you can still find some small late starting nest.

 
Hi! I'm just doing an educat
Hi! I'm just doing an education program on various hymenopterans. ("You teach best what you most need to learn", I've heard!) I'm just putting together a nice PowerPoint presentation, but I need some background facts of course.
I have several wasps that live in my yard. I've got a small paper wasp colony on my porch, right across from a blue mud dauber blob. :) I used to have a yellow jacket nest in my squirrel baffel on my bird feeder. They eventually got used to my comings and goings, but it was a scary thing to fill the feeder for a while! I'd LOVE to get a cicada killer, but I've got really hard clay soil. So I doubt it. And of course several bumblebees live here and there. All my bees and wasps love my garden, designed specifically to attract beneficial insects and birds and butterflies.

I do love wasps, but I'm not brave enough to raise them in my home- especially with an almost-three year old , very active, very curious little girl!

Thanks for asking!

 
 
pics
I take it these are in an enclosure of some sort, and not just buzzing around your house...?? Where did they get the wood pulp for their nest? Did you provide it? The shot of them with a caterpillar is cool.

Our environmental center had tried for years to have an indoor honey-bee observation hive with an entrance to the hive from the outside of the building. Each year eiter mites or foulbrood got them, no matter what we did or how diligent we were. The queen would lay like crazy, they'd go in and out all day, then >boom< all dead. We've never been able to successfully over-winter a colony yet. It's bad times for the bees, to be sure. We should start paying a little more attention to our native bees. Less glamorous, perhaps, but they are more durable, being natives and all.

Thanks for the pics again. And my high-school biology students call ME "eccentric"... they should meet you! Hee hee! Good work.

 
I
would also like to know where they got the wood pulp for their nest. Did you have them in an encolsure? where did they get the caterpillar from? I'v tried many times to try to raise a nest in a cage, but it never worked.

 
i keep paper wasps too.He use
i keep paper wasps too.He uses cardboard for building material, but, not all species take it.I keep dominula and the only take pulp from a chunk of old fence wood i put in there.He ordered the catipiller from www.mulberryfarms.com.We have a forum, and here is a caresheet for keeping them:

http://venomlist.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=17225

 
if your interested take a loo
if your interested take a look.

 
Thanks!!!!!!!
the is alot of good info! i'll have to try raising a colony next spring.

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