Red wasp
The red wasp is a black and yellow wasp with reddish brown patches on its back. It lives in a family with a queen, just like other social wasps. It likes to build its paper nest in a hole in the ground, just under the grass or moss.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its nest is often only about 3 centimetres under the ground, in an old mouse hole or a dry bank.
Sometimes it nests in hollow tree stumps, bird boxes or even attics.
A family is quite small, often around 60 workers, though big ones can have nearly 300.
The queen sleeps through the winter and starts a new nest in early spring.
Red wasps in eastern Asia have ivory white stripes instead of yellow ones.
Most asked questions about Red wasp
?Where does the red wasp make its nest?
Mostly in a hole in the ground near the surface, sometimes in tree stumps or under roofs.
?What does the red wasp eat?
It hunts live insects.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Vespula rufa
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Vespidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Vespidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Vespula rufa (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 Richard Bartz , Munich aka Makro Freak. CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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