Macro Photography

Ichneumon Wasp

I have had numerous paper wasp nests on my canvas awning and normally I leave them alone as they are not too aggressive. One afternoon when I was closing the awning, I noticed a pair of ichneumon wasps showing an interest in an active paper wasp nest. Now ichneumon wasps are parasitic wasps who lay their eggs in living insects and spiders so that their larvae can feed off the host in which they were laid, so I was very keen to see what was going to happen here.

As the nest was almost 2m above the ground, I had to fetch a ladder and collect my macro photography equipment and hope that the species involved would wait for me. Fortunately, they did wait.

The photos in this series were taken with a Canon 350D with a Sigma 105mm macro lens and a Canon 420EX Flash. The camera was on a macro bracket, with the flash mounted to the left of the camera. Shot settings: manual mode, manual focus, F/16 and 1/160s. Unfortunately, the shadow detail is a bit lacking, so I may re-edit them once I find the original series.

In the pic above, you can see the two ichneumon wasps forming a pincer movement on the top right and bottom left.

In this attack, and all subsequent attacks, all the wasps did was to touch antennae for a second or so then retreat.

What was extremely interesting was that only one of the paper wasps tried to defend the nest. The other wasps carried on with what they were doing.

The second ichneumon wasp now attacked the guard.

As you can see, the defending paper wasp is on the left and two others, not defending, at the bottom.

The guard paper wasp has now moved to the top right and the second ichneumon wasp is laying her egg.

I was really privileged to have been able to watch this. What totally amazed me was that neither of the species involved here tried to sting the other The only aggression was the touching of antennae.

(updated: 2 January 2024)

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