Cicada Killer Wasp

Each year when we visited the Narragansett Indian Powwow in Charlestown, RI, we would notice some very big wasps in the parking area. They looked like giant sized Yellow Jackets.

So, we decided to watch these big guys…and we were surprised to see them come gliding across the area grasping a bug bigger than themselves.

These wasps were all carrying the same kind of bug…they had Dog Day Cicadas in their clutches.

The Cicadas were singing away in the nearby wooded area. The wasps would zero in on a Cicada and sting it viciously with a very long stinger…the Cicada stopped moving quickly and the wasp would grasp it with its long legs and take off flying toward a group of holes in the parking area. Some flew strongly and direct to the holes, others seemed to glide, allowing the weight of the Cicada to pull them to their destination. Some would make a smooth landing right near a hole. Others would drop far short and have to either do a lot of dragging or try to get airborne again to try and reach the hole it had made. The holes were openings to underground nests they had built.

While investigating and taking pictures, several actually landed on my Poppy’s hand…they did not sting him…but it was scary. They sure stung the daylights out of the Cicadas.

Some wasps just seemed to fly around and do nothing, others were scurrying on the ground, going in and out of a hole. We could actually see some digging a hole. When they are on the ground, they move rather slow, so it was kind of easy to take pictures.

These wasps are called Eastern Cicada-Killer Wasps, sounds like a vicious name doesn’t it. Actually as it turns out it is a misnomer..because when the wasp stings the cicada, the cicada doesn’t die, it is paralyzed, kind of goes into a coma from which it never awakens. This is an important fact, because what the wasp is doing is placing the living cicada in its nest next to its egg. This way when the young wasp hatches as a small worm-like thing called a larvae, it will have fresh food to eat.

The female wasps place one cicada with an egg if the egg is going to hatch as a male, it places two or three cicadas in the nest if the egg is going to be a female.

The wasps feed only underground as larvae, most folks call them grubs. They have adapted to the cycle of their prey, the cicada.

The cicada-killer wasp spends over 90% of its life underground as a larva. Like most hunting wasps, the cicada-killer wasp is a beneficial insect; it provides a bit of biological control on cicadas, which can damage shade trees by laying eggs under the soft bark of the new growth on the trees' branches.

A grub usually hatches from the egg in a just a few days, then it starts to eat the cicada, at first just a bite or two on the legs, then as it grows it can reach deeper and deeper into the cicada. The cicada is literally eaten alive (although it remains paralyzed). Then the grubs make a hard cocoon and spend the winter underground in the cocoon. It will pupate in the spring, hatch in July or August, dig its way to the surface and live above ground for 2-6 weeks making babies and hunting for cicadas; all adults die each year.

The cicada killer wasp is a solitary wasp; that means they live independently rather than in colonies and do not depend on other members of a colony to share in the raising of young or the maintaining of a nest. (Honeybees do). Other solitary wasps include the mud daubers and potter wasps. Solitary wasps put paralyzed creatures inside the nest as food for their babies.

That’s all for now…if you want to know more about the Cicada Killer Wasps, you might like to visit Prof. Holliday’s Cicada Information site…click here.

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