Orange Potter Wasp - Eumenes latreilli
FAMILY VESPIDAE
This page contains pictures and information about Orange Potter Wasps that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
- Body length 20mm
- This wasp is bright orange red with high contrast black marking warning colours. Female wasp builds pot-shaped mud cells. Potter wasps prey on caterpillars which they paralyze and place inside cells in their nests.
- The wasp collecting mud to build mud pot
- On early summer we saw this red-orange Potter Wasp picking up mud from the loose soil ground. We believed this wasp was collecting soils to build pot nest for its young. We did not found their mud pots yet.
- The above first picture the wasp was cleaning its mouth or front legs. We can see its mouth parts. The long jaws which it uses them to build the pot and carry prey. The long tongue which it uses it to feed on the nectar from flowers. Watch carefully in the second pictures, we can see its sting at the abdomen tip.
- Reference:
- 1. Insects of Australia, CSIRO, Division of Entomology, Melbourne University Press, 2nd Edition 1991, p 979.
- 2. Insects of Australia and New Zealand - R. J. Tillyard, Angus & Robertson, Ltd, Sydney, 1926, p296, plate20.11.
- 3. Orange Potter Wasp - Eumenes latreilli - tapperboy's photostream on Flickr.
