Let’s Talk About Dolichovespula Arenaria

For the vast majority of my readers the title of this blog post may well get a “say what?” type of reaction.

Today I will talk about the Dolichovespula Arenaria, or for those who don’t know Latin, the Common Aerial Yellowjacket Wasp, found throughout Alberta and beyond.

Recently, my wife and I were out for a motorcycle ride, and had a wee stop for a light snack. There we were joined by a few wasps, as they seem to have food radar.

Now most of us think of wasps as disliked pests, or, on occasion, as something to be even despised and eliminated at every opportunity.

It is true that wasps seem to have that type of reputation, however, they do play an important role in the entire circle of life. Wasps actually do way more good than harm. They capture, and consume, various insects such as flies, caterpillars and beetle larvae, hence playing a role in the protection of farm crops and gardens by helping to control the pest populations. As well, similar to bees, they are recognized as valuable pollinators, as they transfer pollen when drinking nectar from flowers.

Today’s subject, the Common Aerial Yellowjacket, are like a cleaning service, when they are out scavenging dead insects to feed their offspring. Often the problem comes when their scavenging habits are combined with their love of sugar, putting them in close proximity of us, humans with food. These situations usually end badly, primarily for the wasps.

For my wife and I, we actually had very interesting time with our lunch companions on this occasion, due to a small piece of candy which fell off an ice cream dessert we had acquired.

We were not only able to observe the wasp, but were able to video it as well. Those videos are shared with you in this blog post. I was most impressed with how they turned out and find them to be quite interesting. I hope you will as well.

I have included four videos for your viewing enjoyment. You will note from the final video that this particular wasp was not into sharing with his companion.

As always, I welcome any comments or feedback you may have. Thanks for reading.