Very Very Large Wasp - _TNY_5287
It has been raining here quite a lot recently which combined with the need to work in the garden taking care of about forty trees which we have had felled, led to very little bug photography.
But today, an opportunity appeared that was way to good to ignore. My mother-in-law found this female giant woodwasp (Urocerus gigas), also known as the banded horntail and greater horntail, was laying her eggs in one of the chopped down pines on the ground.
Apart from being absolutely huge - up to 40 mm (1.6") they also have a really intersting life cycle. The female drills down her ovipositor into the wood (you can see it going straight down from her underside here - the dark one pointing backwards is just the sheath). She then lay five or six eggs into the log, but that is not all. She also grafts a fungus known as the bleeding conifer crust (Stereum sanguinolentum) into the tree. The larvae will stay inside the wood for two years and the fungus will constitute the main source of food for it.
The larvae gnaw long tunnels inside the wood and pack them with a finely chewed wood powder behind them. This makes it difficult to discover that they are present in the wood and as a result, sometimes people have used the wood to build their new house and then suddeny finished giant wasps come out through the wallpaper!
This species is becoming rarer and rarer, but it is comparatively common in the province of Ångermanland where this was taken - it is actually the provincial insect of Ångermanland.
Very Very Large Wasp - _TNY_5287
It has been raining here quite a lot recently which combined with the need to work in the garden taking care of about forty trees which we have had felled, led to very little bug photography.
But today, an opportunity appeared that was way to good to ignore. My mother-in-law found this female giant woodwasp (Urocerus gigas), also known as the banded horntail and greater horntail, was laying her eggs in one of the chopped down pines on the ground.
Apart from being absolutely huge - up to 40 mm (1.6") they also have a really intersting life cycle. The female drills down her ovipositor into the wood (you can see it going straight down from her underside here - the dark one pointing backwards is just the sheath). She then lay five or six eggs into the log, but that is not all. She also grafts a fungus known as the bleeding conifer crust (Stereum sanguinolentum) into the tree. The larvae will stay inside the wood for two years and the fungus will constitute the main source of food for it.
The larvae gnaw long tunnels inside the wood and pack them with a finely chewed wood powder behind them. This makes it difficult to discover that they are present in the wood and as a result, sometimes people have used the wood to build their new house and then suddeny finished giant wasps come out through the wallpaper!
This species is becoming rarer and rarer, but it is comparatively common in the province of Ångermanland where this was taken - it is actually the provincial insect of Ångermanland.