European tube wasp
Ancistrocerus gazella
The European tube wasp is a small black and yellow wasp that builds its nest inside hollow stems and old beetle tunnels. The mother makes little rooms with walls of clay. In each room she leaves an egg and a store of caterpillars for her baby.
Lives in
Europe and Morocco, and now New Zealand
What does it eat?
The grown-up wasps drink nectar and sweet honeydew from aphids. Their larvae eat the caterpillars the mother collected.
How fast is it?
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
European tube wasp about 22 km/h (14 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
A car driving in town about 50 km/h (31 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
A mother can collect up to 20 caterpillars for one nest.
2
The larva eats all its caterpillars in ten or twelve days.
3
When the new wasp is ready, it wets the clay door to make it soft and then pushes its way out.
4
It arrived in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1987.
you asked
Most asked questions about European tube wasp
?Where does the European tube wasp make its nest?
In hollow plant stems, dead twigs or old tunnels made by wood-boring insects.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Ancistrocerus gazella
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Vespidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Vespidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- European potter wasp
Where the facts come from
- Ancistrocerus gazella (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Jacqui Geux. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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