Polistes Exclamans colony

Heres a video I made of my failed P. Exclamans colony. The queen died a month ago so I keep them for experimenting and to increase the size of the nest. I did find a queen though from another nest so she is part of an experiment to see if they will accept each other. (Holding onto stick on bottom poking head out)

NOTE: Sorry for the zooming not much of a video maker sort of guy...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq3z50gbhUA

Aint you abit afried they will get out? how do you even control such things? wasps is scary

When you put the cage upside down it messes with their minds. They tend to like to go up to leave but if you put it upside down you can stick your hand in the cage to clean, give crix, or give water without them getting out. I do it at night when they're all on the nest so they don't cause me any trouble.

isnt there an easy way to get them to accept her, like having her sealed off from them inside the enclosure till they get used to the smell, i think i saw something like that on t.v with ants but im not sure just thought id ask

Well because the old queen smell is still on the nest the workers wont allow her on the nest. She tried twice from what ive seen the first time they chased her off. The second a worker smelled her, and let her on but when she stuck her head in one of the cells the workers got irritated and chased her off. I think i'm gonna let the workers go and put the queen in the same cage with the nest and see how it does.

well keep us posted im interested now, lol im shocked that im interested im not a huge fan of wasps i dont like getting stung ( i know that makes no sense )

cool. ive got a wasp nest in the lane behind my house, and they are wreaking havoc with my dog.

yeah all dogs and cats hate wasps, mine have a tendancy to try and eat them.

scorpion111 wrote:

cool. ove got a wasp nest in the lane behind my house, and they are wreaking havoc with my dog.

Ship it all over to waspstormADMIN i think he will be happy

Yeah. I dislike wasps... but they are pretty

Lol that would be awesome because the colony in the video is a failure with no queen. At the beginning of the summer I had two queens but both died.

Do you have any idea what they look like? If you could take a picture or describe them that would be cool.

waspstormADMIN wrote:

Lol that would be awesome because the colony in the video is a failure with no queen. At the beginning of the summer I had two queens but both died.

Do you have any idea what they look like? If you could take a picture or describe them that would be cool.

im pretty sure they are just yellowjackets, but ive seen a few rarer species around a flowering bush in my back garden.

oh i've never taken care of yj before. i heard they're hard though

well, they certainly arent having any difficulties over here! my dog seems to like the taste of them........

well in captivity i mean

i can imagen Wasps being hard to keep no matter what sp we are talking about?

Kejser wrote:

i can imagen Wasps being hard to keep no matter what sp we are talking about?

yellowjackets. very common during the summer here in britain. i think ive been stung 3 times now........

Yeah we have yellowjackets in Dk allso.. but i meant inside your home in a "cage" that must be really differnt..

The ones I had and the ones I have atm arn't hard at all. They are a bit of escape artists. The whole colony knows where the cage door is so that makes me nervous but theres no other way.

i think most small insects are escape artists........

...Eh yeah but it just shows how smart wasps are. When I'm giving them things like crickets, water, and honey they watch me the entire time, and as soon as I take my hand out they bolt for the door. Once closed they start biting at the door and doing anything to get out. I'm releasing them today though so i'm just going to use the queen in the cage to start the colony over again.

waspstormADMIN wrote:

...Eh yeah but it just shows how smart wasps are. When I'm giving them things like crickets, water, and honey they watch me the entire time, and as soon as I take my hand out they bolt for the door. Once closed they start biting at the door and doing anything to get out. I'm releasing them today though so i'm just going to use the queen in the cage to start the colony over again.

oh i never knew wasps ate crickets. is it the type of mouthpeice that sucks out all the body fluids?

No, wasps have chewing mouthparts. Bees have lapping mouthparts -- I'm not aware of any Hymenoptera that have "sucking" mouthparts.

I don't know for sure, but I imagine the difficult part of keeping Vespula spp. in captivity would be that the genus is known for being very aggressive and attacking with almost no (or none at all) provocation.

Yes, heres a pic. of one of my old injured exclamans that died a couple weeks ago. If you look closly you can see its "jaws"

What sp can sting more then once you should keep hornets there awesome