On Wasps

1.

My first memory about wasps—or any stinging bug in general—was when I was following by brothers through the woods and he stepped on a fallen hive. My older brother stepped on what looked like a papery dome and a swarm of wasps flew out. We all screamed as we were swarmed by a few dozen black-and-yellow needles, and we all ran back home as fast as we could.

2.

Paper wasps are named for the way they build their nests. They gather fibers from surrounding plants and paste them together with their saliva in paper-like structures formed into combs.

3.

Wasp is a 1957 Science Fiction spy thriller novel by Eric Frank Russell. James Mowry is a human tasked with being a lone saboteur or a “wasp” against the alien Syrian Empire.

4.

My second memory about wasps was a few years later. My dad was mowing the lawn when I saw a black and yellow bug land on his shin and sting him. It quickly swelled up a bulbous black and purple lump the width of his shin and the depth of a baseball. Later that day I saw him icing his leg on the couch. When he lifted up the towel wrapped ice pack his entire shin was a nasty purple and I thought he was dying.

5.

Western Yellow Jackets build large nests made of plant fibers in paper-like structures formed into hexagonal shapes. When allowed to fully form their nests, if built above ground they resemble inverted raindrops with a small opening at the bottom. Their favorite place to nests is usually found a few inches below ground in dark cavities such as rodent burrows or between retaining wall rocks.

6.

Since the nineteenth century, wasps have been used as a model for jewelry. A popular example of this being jeweled brooches.

7.

My third encounter with wasps was when my little brother was on a small swing set in the corner of my aunt’s yard. He came running over to our mother crying with several red welts on his arms and face. “Bees,” he cried. But they had been wasps.

8.

European paper wasps are often mistaken for western yellowjackets. Both are from the Vespidae family and both are yellow with black markings. The clearest distinction between the two is the color of their antennae. Western Yellow Jackets have black antennae while European Paper Wasps have orange.

9.

“Wasp Wasting” was a female fashion fad that became popular around the 1870’s and 1880’s. Instead of using fashions to create the illusion of a small waist, the woman would endure multiple health issues, including deformed bone structures, and organs to cinch their waste to the extreme. This “extreme tight lacing” would result in waists ranging from 15 inches to 18 inches in diameter.

10.

The fourth time I saw a swarm of wasps was when my twin brother, who was 20 at the time, stood up in a children's covered playground and crushed a wasp nest with his head. They swarmed him while he ran, leaping out of the playhouse window in the process. Afterwards he looked polka-dotted covered with countless red blisters.

11.

Unlike bees, wasps can sting repeatedly.

12.

Aristophanes, the ancient Greek playwright, is credited with composing “The Wasps.” The play was a political satire poking fun at the demagogue Cleon as well as the Athenian Institutions. It was titled “The Wasps” because the chorus was made up of old jurors who were, at one point in the play, directed to bustle around and behave like a swarm.

13.

The fifth time I encountered wasps was when they were trying to build a nest on my back porch. The nest was just barely starting to take form, and only a handful of wasps were bustling about and climbing over it. I sprayed them with the garden hose until the nest fell down and all the wasps left. This is now a common practice at my house.

14.

When I asked my mother about wasps, she told me that when I was very young, she tried to teach my brothers and I not to be scared of ‘the bees’. We’d been at a park and fled to her when the black-and-yellow insects had scared us. She told us to scare them back, so we ran around yelling, “Boo-bees!”

15.

During winter many wasps die, not from the cold but from starvation. The queens will hibernate the winters in sheltered places such as attics or crevices of retaining walls. and oftentimes are killed by spiders that share the same sheltered place.