Golden digger wasp
The golden digger wasp is a big black wasp with a wide orange-red band on its body and yellowish wings. It lives alone, not in a nest with other wasps. The mother is a strong hunter and a busy digger.
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Fun facts
The mother digs a tunnel in the ground about 15 centimetres long, with several little rooms.
In each little room she puts one grasshopper and one egg, so every baby has its own meal.
The eggs hatch after three or four days, and the larvae are fully grown about 18 days later.
The grown-up wasps fly in July and August.
Most asked questions about Golden digger wasp
?What does the golden digger wasp eat?
The grown-ups drink flower nectar. Their larvae eat the grasshoppers their mother brings.
?How big is the golden digger wasp?
It is about 1.5 to 2.3 centimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Sphex funerarius
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Sphecidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Sphecidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Sphex funerarius (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 Pjt56. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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