The Wasp

A wasp is, more often than not, a small, dirty little insect of the order Hymenoptera that doesn't belong to one of the more popular species in that family, like ants or bees.

Unlike their aforementioned cousins, wasps have little to no symbiotic relationship with human beings, their most extensive contribution being the brutal slaughtering or long drawn out parasitising of agricultural pest species. Indeed, when taken into account that wasps are frequently very agressive towards most known organisms - including other wasps - and the little benefit we gain from them is done more out of the wasp's desire to subjugate, control and destroy all other creatures in their territory than out of any innate goodwill, we can only conclude that they are generally lacking in their usefulness to man.

However, despite their overall pointlessness wasps continue to proliferate and can be found in abundance in both hemispheres, a crawling, agressive testament to the misplaced tolerance of their human benefactors.

What makes a Killer?

The common wasp (Vespidae vulgaris), and it's close spawnling the Yellowjacket wasp (Vespula arenaria), are both comprised of a small, segmented body, neatly divided into two ghastly halves (Thorax and Abdomen) by a slim Petiole, also known as a Wasp Waist. Mounted on top of this vile carapace is the wasp's head - a disturbingly shaped avatar of unspeakableness with a large set of mandibles, Five eyes (three underdeveloped, two large and compound), and a pair of primally terrifying sensory antennae. Clawing their way out of the wasp's back are four thin, veiny wings with the texture of pure nasty, and situated on the far end of the abdomen lies the single most defining feature - the stinger.

The stinger is the wasp's primary and most used weapon in it's biological arsenal, and is often used to subdue attackers or murder smaller insects and their small insect children (larvae). In extreme cases, the wasp's sting can trigger anaphylactic shock in the body of an allergic human, giving them a protracted and painful demise if not treated immediately. Perhaps a mite disturbingly, the long, thin and retractable barb of the stinger is actually a modified ovipositor. The ovipositor, still used by parasitic wasps (and consequently removing their ability to sting) was once used to inject host organisms with the wasp's life-hungry larvae, which then fed off their paralysed host until the later stages of their development. That lasted anything up to a couple of months. The host remaining alive all the while.

However, in wasps like the Yellowjacket and other members of the suborder Apocrita (stinging wasps), the ovipositor has been made redundant by the societal hive structure, and has long since been adapted to punch venom deep into the flesh of their victims. The venom is uniquely painful, and as mentioned above, potentially fatal. It is also little comfort to think that every time one has been stung by a wasp, one has in essence been raped by that wasp.


The Hideous, Hideous, Cycle of Life

Although fortunately an individual wasp colony will only survive for a year (the wasps still not having worked out a way to store food for the winter), they do still have ways of clinging onto existence like an obese mountaineer hugging the leg of his 8 stone climbing partner, and their species manages to return to full strength year after year after year.

The life cycle of the wasp colony begins, as with most hive structures, with a nomadic queen. The queen wasp will wrench the bark away from the nearest inoffensive tree with her powerful jaws, and will then pulp the wood into a fine paper (but not as good as human paper), which she will then use to construct a small nest containing about twenty hexagonal cells. Once construction is complete, she will implant an egg in each one of those cells, and spend the next month concentrating solely on feeding her new larvae. This is widely known as the best time to obliterate a hive, for this is when the colony is at it's weakest and least numerous.

Once the larvae have developed into workers (enslaved females with underdeveloped reproductive organs), the queen then has to just lie back and concentrate on spawning untold amounts of evil while these new workers run the day to day business of the hive. The colony will continue to grow in this manner, and reports of hives measuring five feet by five feet are not unknown (although thankfully, they are rare). In late summer, round about September, a fully mature nest can have up to 25,000 violent, poisonous and psychotic little warriors storming through it's hexagonal halls.

During the summer, the wasps are certainly at their most active - building their large paper fortresses and feeding their young with the flesh of their recent kills. However, come autumn, the food sources begin to get scarcer. The colony, being made from paper and therefore not the strongest of natural structures, will begin to break apart causing many workers to die of cold. Sadly for the rest of the natural world, by this time the colony has produced another queen, who will fly off with twenty or so other males and find a place to bed down for the winter - ready to start the whole horrible process again at the first light of spring.

For those wasps that aren't members of the suborder Apocrita, the life cycle can mostly be about the parasitism of spiders, caterpillars and similar creatures. Once injected deep into the body of the victim, the wasp larvae will feed and feed and feed before burrowing viciously back out of the host (finally ending it's misery once and for all), taking wing, and contributing to the overall gag factor of the Terran biosphere with it's fresh H.R. Giger inspired introduction to the world.

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