Beaked twig gall wasp
Burnettweldia plumbella
Name means: “the galls have a pointed tip, like a little beak”
The beaked twig gall wasp is a tiny wasp that makes oak trees grow little balls on their twigs. These balls are called galls, and the wasp babies grow up safely inside them. The galls are bright red or green with yellow spots.
Lives in
Western North America, on oak trees such as blue oak and scrub oaks
Length
3 to 4 mm (0.12 to 0.16 in)
What does it eat?
Its babies live inside the gall and feed on the oak tree from the inside.
How big is it?
How long is it?
💅small enough to sit on your fingernail⚽could fly across a whole football pitch in 34 seconds⚡moves 760 times its own body length every second
How big is Beaked twig gall wasp compared to YOU?
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How fast is it?
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
Beaked twig gall wasp about 11 km/h (6.8 mph)
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
Each gall can be up to 15 millimetres across, bigger than the wasp itself.
2
The galls grow in spring and summer, and the new wasps climb out in November and December.
3
In 2021 scientists moved it into a brand new group of its own with a new name.
you asked
Most asked questions about Beaked twig gall wasp
?What is a gall?
A little ball that an oak tree grows around a wasp egg. The baby wasp lives and eats inside it.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Burnettweldia plumbella
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Cynipidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Cynipidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Burnettweldia plumbella (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 (c) Cricket Raspet, some rights reserved (CC BY). CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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