@etanaposti - Thanks for your comment and great question! The long string-like structure you saw the wasp carrying into the nest is actually part of another insect the wasp was carrying back to the nest as food to feed their larvae (baby wasps). If you look carefully and slow the footage down, you can see that the wasp is carrying a fairly large insect it had hunted and the insect has a long tube-like structure at the end of it's abdomen called an "ovipositor" which is used to lay eggs deep into tree bark or mud or other material that the insect wants to lay its eggs inside. It is hard to tell which type of insect the wasp hunted at 8:43 in the timeline that has this ovipositor but there are several insects that have fairly long ovipositors, including other types of wasps known as Ichneumon Wasps and Wood Wasps. So it is quite possible this yellowjacket actually hunted another wasp species here.
@etanaposti - The round hole in the wood that these wasps are using as their entry/exit point for the nest is a utility hole drilled into the wood by humans during building construction that was evidently meant to allow a utility pipe to pass through the wood floor joist but it was never used. This left a nice open space for wasps to use. So this type of hole should always be filled/blocked in any structure to keep insects and rodents out.
What is that long string they got 8:43 Why they need something like that in their nest?
And, is that round hole something they made?
@etanaposti - Thanks for your comment and great question! The long string-like structure you saw the wasp carrying into the nest is actually part of another insect the wasp was carrying back to the nest as food to feed their larvae (baby wasps). If you look carefully and slow the footage down, you can see that the wasp is carrying a fairly large insect it had hunted and the insect has a long tube-like structure at the end of it's abdomen called an "ovipositor" which is used to lay eggs deep into tree bark or mud or other material that the insect wants to lay its eggs inside. It is hard to tell which type of insect the wasp hunted at 8:43 in the timeline that has this ovipositor but there are several insects that have fairly long ovipositors, including other types of wasps known as Ichneumon Wasps and Wood Wasps. So it is quite possible this yellowjacket actually hunted another wasp species here.
@etanaposti - The round hole in the wood that these wasps are using as their entry/exit point for the nest is a utility hole drilled into the wood by humans during building construction that was evidently meant to allow a utility pipe to pass through the wood floor joist but it was never used. This left a nice open space for wasps to use. So this type of hole should always be filled/blocked in any structure to keep insects and rodents out.
Hi
@marinapotenza9958 - Hi! Thanks for your comment. Hope you enjoy the episode and stay tuned for more in 2025!