Elegant grass-carrying wasp
The elegant grass-carrying wasp is a slim wasp with a black body, a rusty red to yellowish tail end and see-through wings. It hunts grasshoppers and crickets for its babies. It closes its nest with a fluffy plug of chewed-up dry grass.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It does not dig its own nest. It moves into holes that other insects have already made.
The plug of chewed grass works like a door that keeps unwanted visitors out of the nursery.
It lives alone, not in a big wasp nest with lots of other wasps.
It used to live only in the west and south of North America, but now it is showing up in the northeast too.
It sometimes picks the same kind of nest holes that mason bees like.
Most asked questions about Elegant grass-carrying wasp
?Why does it carry grass?
It uses chewed dry grass to plug its nest, which keeps out pests while its babies grow.
?What does the grass-carrying wasp eat?
It hunts grasshoppers and crickets and stores them as food for its larvae.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Isodontia elegans
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Sphecidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Sphecidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Isodontia elegans (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 Rhododendrites. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
Bug Wiki honey jar For grown-ups: Bug Wiki is free, with no ads and no tracking. A little honey in the jar helps keep it online.Fill the honey jar
European hornet
Northern giant hornet
Bald-faced hornet
Red velvet ant
Eastern cicada killer
Asian hornet
Burying mantis
Dark-barred twin-spot carpet
Bordered wedge-shaped beetle
Common alpine
Vagabond sod webworm moth
Devoted horse fly.jpg){kind=link}