Wasps are functionally the same as bees, we just hate them because they’re not as cute n can hurt you more than once without dying
Except they’re not because wasps don’t make honey, they aren’t pollinators, they’re completely different insects and serve a very different function.
Not sure where you’re getting that information from but it is not correct, as wasps are actually very important pollinators.
There are also 20,000 species of described bees and of those there are only a small handful that produce honey, and of those there are currently even less (off the top of my head I can only think of 4) species we can actually harvest any honey from.
Wasps are also pollinators, ever heard of fig wasps, there are a superfamily of wasps called Chalcidoidea and each different species of fig often has one or two very specific species of wasp needed to pollinate it.
There’s still this misconception that wasps aren’t great pollinators compared to bees but this isn’t true, wasps are just as ecologically important in pollination as bees are, and also pollinate flowering plants and trees. For example; thynnine wasps pollinate orchids like this dwarf hammer orchid.
This is super common in Australia where we have about 200 species of orchids (spider orchids, elbow orchids, flying duck orchids) that use male insects (most of which are wasp species) to pollinate.
Also most bee species can hurt you more than once without dying. Yes, honeybees have a barbed stinger and die after they sting, but not all bees are honeybees.
And, as our curator likes to say, evolutionarily speaking bees are basically just vegan wasps.
I’m so happy to see this new movement lauding the many virtues of wasps. I’ve had so many people ask me “what are they good for?” Like what the fuck are YOU good for Heather? Do you even know how many different kinds of wasps there are? Yes they’re important, dammit! An animal doesn’t become worthless just because you personally don’t like it! Your opinion means fuckall to the ecosystem! It doesn’t care!
Also there are thousands of species of parasitoid wasps that are significant predators of other insects and spiders, and the majority of those wasps can’t or won’t sting you anyways.
Just because it isn’t cute enough to make you happy doesn’t mean it’s bad.
In this extraordinary case of mimicry, a harmless katydid (Aganacris sp.), mimics the feared tarantula hawk (Pepsis sp.) This large wasp has one of the most painful insect stings known. Its sting has been described as “Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has been dropped into your bubble bath” by the Schmidt Pain Index, a measure of severity of insect stings. That’s good news for the katydid, since many predators have learned to avoid insects with the warning coloration of the Pepsis wasp.
Many of us are familiar with the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), but a research group is France has identified the genes for C-type lectins in this species most likely originated from parasitic wasps that are known to lay their eggs in the caterpillars of this species. These proteins are carbohydrate binding proteins with a large number of roles in cells.
Parasitic wasps are common in the insect world, with virtually all Lepidopteran species being targets for parasitism. It is believed that ~100 million years ago a wasp ancestor domesticated the bracovirus, and now these parasitic wasps employ it as a biological weapon against the caterpillars. The virus is produced in the wasp’s ovaries and acts as a vector for horizontal gene transfer (HGT). In the eukaryotic world, it is fairly rare for such an exchange of DNA between organisms.
The virus has long since lost its ability to generate a successful capsid, and as a result is reliant on the wasp’s ovaries for replication. The virus is injected into the host along with the wasp’s eggs where the domesticated virus promotes the growth of wasp progeny within the caterpillar by inhibiting its immune system. Each wasp lineage has its own set of virulence determinants encoded by the virus.
Integration of viral DNA may occur occasionally, if a caterpillar host manages to successfully defend itself against a parasitic attack or if the wasp lays its eggs in the wrong target. In both cases the caterpillar may go onto to develop into a moth or butterfly in possession of viral and wasp derived genes as seen in the monarch butterfly.
Figure showing the hypothesised process for HGT to occur between wasps and Lepidopteran species (Source)
This is one of my most frequent questions. People love bees, but they think wasps are just mean and that they sting for no reason. I’ve been around so many wasps and picked up wasps and never been stung – if you respect them like any other animal they’ll leave you alone unless under very unusual circumstances.
They are also basically “keystone predators,” they feed on so many other insects that if wasps disappeared the balance would go so haywire that many insects would wipe out other species, then each other, then we would lose more species that depended on those insects.
Wasps are so important to insect population control that plant life communicates with them about it directly. When a tree is being eaten by caterpillars, it will release stress pheromones that evolved just to attract the one species of wasp that specializes in those caterpillars as prey! This is so precise, corn crops can tell if they’re being eaten by either bollworms or armyworms – very similar caterpillars, but parasitized by two different wasps.
They are also major pollinators – orchids and many other flowers are pollinated only by wasps, not bees, though wasps will also pollinate all the same flowers that bees do.
Most people convinced that wasps are just evil and useless seem to be recalling a yellow jacket sting more than anything else; yellow jackets make huge nests that can be underground, so you can be walking all over it and pissing them off without knowing, whereas other animals would hear the vibration and steer clear.
PiraticOctopus 